Subservience
by Swamp-Eyes
Summary: AU\ A stubborn rebellious enslaved war prisoner, a merciless General and a sad but devoted woman. Beyond hate, disgust and pain, can there be respect and redemption? TifaSephAeris
1. The Slave

**Subservience**

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**Chapter 1: The Slave

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_Still as a slave before his lord,  
The ocean hath no blast;  
His great bright eye most silently  
Up to the Moon is cast-_

_(S.T. Coleridge,_ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

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One thing, one thing especially in that hell, Tifa would have never been able to forget. That was not the worst thing which had happened to her, but it was the most irritating, the most oppressive.

And it was the dampness. The wetness. The _cold_, not an unbearable cold, but an exhausting, scavenging one. Days, weeks kneeled down in that frosty dirty mud, which seemed to climb on her legs, transmitting through all her nerves those shivers. And there just _wasn't _a way to get rid of it, it was everywhere, _always _there. Her hands were pinned above her head, her blood yet barely reaching them, and from the very first day she had been brought there she had never managed to wipe the mud-stains on her cheek and on her mouth. She was pale, spectral like a goner, if not a dead, staring blank minded at the tip of her once beautiful hair sinking into that black mire, just because she had lost the strength to hold her head high. She didn't even want to look at what was happening around her, she wouldn't even hear the cry for help of the prisoners in that cave.  
With her almost lifeless eyes she was just enjoying the spectacle of her own decadence.

Moreover, Tifa was ill.  
She was not just mentally ill, affected by those nonsensical visions which drew men to insanity, so typical of all prisoners.  
She was also poisoned, poisoned in late stage, _alarming _green small but innumerable spots appearing all over her skin, growing day by day, as she was able to see in spite of the darkness that surrounded her.

And, relentlessly, _those _images tormented, stabbed her mind.  
Images of her house, of her husband, of her son. _All_, all gone, destroyed.  
Just fragments in her memory, hurting fragments. And she was _obliged _to think about it, because there was nothing else to think about, just the absolute black of the cave, just those incomprehensible screams.

_Long swords, red blood, blond hair.  
__Broken glasses, crying children, burning houses. _

War.

She never slept. For her there wasn't any prisoner's dream: there was only that blatantly inevitable torture.

There was nothing, absolutely _nothing _left for her. And when she had realised that, she had tried to _suicide_, also. Yes, to suicide _there_, in that place which looked, _smelled, _like the death itself. She had tried to cut her veins forcing her wrists on the metal of the handcuffs which kept her imprisoned there. Doing that, she was probably searching for a way to leave that place. Dead or alive, she didn't mind.

But after that affair had died down in two exiguous trails of blood down her arms, Tifa had given up.

But, still, she couldn't stand the cold mud. _Mud_.  
The mud which made her a dirty war prisoner.  
Because a _dirty war prisoner _was exactly what she had become.

---------

One day, or one night - it was impossible to be sure in that cave - two strangely rational voices pierced Tifa's mind, momentarily setting aside all her internal voices and the prisoner's screams.

"For Lord's sake, Greg! Pick up quickly the fucking slaves the General wants and let's get outta here! I _hate _this smell of death!" a guard was stating.

"But i_s _there someone alive here? Ew!" the other guard snorted while raising a woman with his gloved hand "this one must be dead since _days_!"

"There _should _be someone alive. Just, don't choose the ones who are screaming. They've probably gone insane. They'd be totally useless." his voice was arid, as if he was talking about objects instead of human beings.

"I'll use our old method. One yes, one no. So, you come, you die, you come, you die, you come, you die…"

And while the litany went on, Tifa could hear the clinging of released handcuffs a few metres from her, the sobbing of women, the snorts of agony.  
She really didn't mind coming or dying. Probably, she would have died anyway. And basically, she didn't even understand what was going on.

".. you come, you die, you come, you die, you.. No. I guess it's enough now. For what I'm concerned, you can exterminate the rest of them."

"Aahahah don't say so! They still have a soul, you know." the guard laughed while he was still setting the list of prisoners free.

"Yeah, whatever. But move it, please. I'm not helping you out, I don't want those… those _creatures _to make me filthy." he added crossing his arms.

Suddenly, when she wasn't expecting that anymore, Tifa felt the guard's hands unlocking her handcuffs. A suffocated cry escaped her throat, she was too shocked for that sudden awakening from her unreachable death-in-life.  
She instantly widened her eyes, and stirred abruptly as if a jolt had hit her.

"Whoa! Look at this one! She has great boobs! Seems like your 'one yes one no' strategy sometimes actually _makes _sense…"

Tifa had remained for too long untouched in her position to stand the sudden change. So, while the guard pulled roughly her arm to make her stand on her feet, she lost consciousness, vaguely realising that was the last time she saw that cave, and that the _bloody _irony of fate was pulling her by her hair out the hell in which it had previously thrown her.

---------

_I'm dead_

Was her first thought when she saw all that celestial white.  
Spotless white surrounded her, and it was _blinding_ for her eyes accustomed to darkness.  
But the second thought which followed was more realistic and simple.

_This is too bad to be heaven_

She saw a dark stain on the white beneath her. Even though it was hard, she tried to focus, and after a considerable amount of seconds, she was able to ascertain that the dark stain was nothing but her hand. Her dirty hand, filthy with mud.

Something else was different.  
The coldness and the wetness had disappeared. Unconsciously she tried to reach the mud-stain on her face with her hand, ready to feel something holding her back. But nothing did. For every inch she trailed her hand on the floor, she felt thousands of needles pinching her muscles.

_This is not heaven at all_

She closed her aching eyes, letting her head fall down on the floor again, her lips kissing that endless white.  
Slowly, she began hearing voices, _normal _voices, conversations, so different from the prisoners' ravings. There was something _tense _there around, but nothing more.

The voice she heard more often was the voice of a man.  
A subtle voice, a _dry _voice.  
A somewhat scaring voice.  
The man threw brief statements in the air, and devoted silence or tentative answers followed them.

When Tifa opened her eyes again, she focused again on the white pavement, and this time she could recognise black parallel lines running through the room, dividing it into squared tiles. Still, those tiles appeared to her exaggeratedly white.  
_It's just you, hell! You and you're damaged eyes_  
She said to herself.

But then something black materialized inches from her eyes.  
_Something -_ she didn't know what exactly - made her freeze in that position. An explicable _panic_ caught her, even when she realised that in front of her there was just a pair of boots

"And you are…" a shadow lowered on her for a few seconds, then disappeared. "Nr 925. Captured in Niebelheim. Right?"

She didn't answer.  
She didn't _want _to answer, and she _couldn't _answer. She still had doubt that the freezing voice was all for her.  
Instead, she started examining the boots in front of her. Leather black, that nearly comforting black which her eyes were accustomed to, with metallic buckles that the white of the room made more bright.  
She knew she didn't have the power to look higher than that.

"_Answer _me."

The voice came again, cutting the still air.  
But Tifa didn't move, and all that the man could see of her was her messy black hair, scattered on the white tiles, mud-tingled on its tips. Other than that, there were just a pair of bony arms abandoned on the floor, since her legs were hidden by her skirt and her boots.

And Tifa didn't dare looking at him, because she was feeling something excruciatingly _hostile _in the whole aura which surrounded the man.

"I'm not used to talking to people who don't look at me, and you will be no exception." the voice sounded like a sentence.

And the terrible sentence arrived when the stranger's hand violated her trance again, grabbing her chin and raising her head from the floor.  
The cold touch of those fingers and the blinding light of the white neon above them left her breathless, an immediate sense of repulsion gushing from her heart.

"_NO_!"  
She barely recognised her hoarse voice, and automatically she scratched the stranger's hand with her long nails.

Then her head fell again to the ground: she felt even more tired than before, and she was now breathing hard in the absolute silence which had fell after her attack.

Meanwhile, the man was analysing the four little blood trails on the back of his hand, narrowing his eyes but remaining still calm.

"Fine" he stated "Is that so, then?"  
With a sudden and harsh movement he kicked Tifa, making her lie on her back instead  
"Now I'm asking you: what _is _your name?"

But Tifa rolled on her stomach, now growling like a wounded animal, and hiding her face against the floor again.  
In less than one second the man's boot hit her, and then pinned her throat to the ground.

"_Answer _me."

_"My name's none of your business!"_ Tifa yelled with shrill voice, bruising her lungs, and showing him for a fraction of second her demonic red eyes, which in those moments had regained all the fire they had lost during the permanence in the cave.  
And in that fraction of second, while she was still wondering how she had managed to put the words together in a way which was not nonsensical, blinded by the neon light, she caught a glimpse of the man's appearance.

She saw _black_, black basically, and then silver shimmering everywhere for a few seconds, then the man's boot nearly strangled her.

"If you think you can make me a fool, well, let me remind you that you're not exactly in the most suitable position to do so."

Tifa felt clearly, from the push of his boot, that he was furious; but he was hiding it very well in his mask of indifference.

"I can kill you right now, without hesitance or regret." the man voice was blank.

And, hearing it, Tifa had no doubt he meant exactly what he said.

"Please, Sephiroth, stop!"

It was a melodious female voice interrupting them. Then, a pink vision, a relaxing aura contrasted Sephiroth's tense one.  
And as soon as his boot's push lost his strength, Tifa stopped squirming and cuddled on the white floor once again, exhausted.

"What's the problem?" Sephiroth asked briskly to the woman who was now keeping him away from Tifa.  
She had both her hands on his shoulders, in a way almost none else dared to do.

"Can't you see her arms? She has been poisoned… she's probably still not herself. Please, do not harm her."

A moment of silence followed.  
"Aeris. She's just a _slave_." Sephiroth finally said with a disgusted face.

"She doesn't deserve this treatment anyway!" the woman insisted.

"Listen: just because I'm in good mood today that doesn't mean you can come here around giving me _orders_. Now _leave_." Sephiroth's voice left no choice.

After a few seconds, Tifa heard distinctively the echo of the woman's heels resounding in the room. Tifa actually considered an intriguing possibility: maybe that Sephiroth would kill her right there, finally setting her free from that inferno.

Sephiroth locked his gaze on Tifa again. She looked more dead than alive.

_But she's too alive -_he thought sarcastically - _She's a wild beast which bites and scratches_.. - For a moment his eyes latched on the blood trails on his hand, than returned to her, to that disgusting skinny woman.

Finally, he grabbed Tifa by her hair, ignoring the fact he was arousing in her infinite _repulsion_, and held his wounded hand inches from her nose.  
"Whatever your name is. Whoever you are. I wont forget about _this." _

Then Sephiroth smacked Tifa's head to the ground again.

Tifa instantly became grateful to all the Gods that Sephiroth wasn't touching her anymore. It was impossible to describe the horrible sensations the man's touch provoked in her. It was like all the terrible images of two weeks ago crowded into her brains when she came in contact with him.

"This one's okay." Sephiroth was speaking. And Tifa didn't know he was pointing at her while saying so. "Make her join the other housemaids. _Quickly_."

And he left the room.

**Chapter 1-End

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**Author's Notes:** I've had this idea from a while… I don't know. I decided to write this chapter, but I am actually not sure if I will continue this… I hope there's still some TifaSeph fan out there… even if the couple is wrong. Eh. Another problem is my English: I'm trying to improve it, but it's hard, really.. Maybe I will just delete this story and repost it when I'll be more talented.

Tell me at least if this first chapter was worth reading, or if I have wasted my time…

**(AN2:** I've now fixed some errors and the dialogues-dashes thing. I hope now this is less confusing than before, and that I'm not leaving something else behind..  
A very special 'thank you' to all the people who helped me out and gave me suggestions. If I ever manage to come out with another chapter, it'll be thanks to you.)

Swamp-eyes


	2. The Master

**Subservience

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**Chapter 2: The Master**

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_Is this really living  
Sometimes it's hard to tell  
Or is this a kind of gentler hell?_

_(Ben Harper)_

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Why all, all in that house - even if the _house _was quite an euphemism for what seemed to be a boundless palace - had to be so irritatingly white?

She stood still in a bathroom, probably one among ten, where a scared blonde housemaid had brought her. She didn't know how many hours, or days, had passed since they had removed her from that prison-cave. Or even if her first face-to-face with Sephiroth had taken place one or five hours ago. She had largely lost it and she didn't care. By now there wasn't a single part of her body that didn't scream in pain.

_Is this really the housemaids' bath? It's probably as big as my former bedroom…_  
Her most bitter vein of sarcasm never died completely.

Tifa examined her figure in the huge mirror, which ran almost all over the wall. She had never before found herself ugly. But in that very moment, hell, she _did_.

Her dirty, messy black hair covered most of her face. She ran her hand through it, so that the mirror could reflect her features. She still had mud dried on her skin, a trail of blood oozing down her nose, brilliant red, fresh blood.

_Where the hell did I get this?_

She pressed her forehead as if she was trying to hold back those tormenting memories. Instead, the answer to her question crashed into all her barriers and for an instant she was able to see vividly the image of that man - of _Sephiroth _- smacking her head to the ground after having _touched _her.

_How... how did he even dare…_

She suddenly felt a rush of blood to her head, and the moment after the sink, the mirror, the floor, were all dangerously rushing towards her. She gasped, and held out her hand trying to hang to something - _anything _- but grabbed nothing but air, finally breaking down on the ground.

Once again, her nose met violently the white floor, leaving a bloodstain on the perfect tile.

That perfection was irritating, _really _irritating. With anger she plastered her hand on the stain, expanding it as much as she could.

_This perfection…. I... _

Tifa glanced at the mirror again, contemplating herself like a picture; but all she could gather was a terrible sensation of inadequacy. She realized the problem was not only the bloodstain on the floor - oh no. The problem was _her_, because she _herself _was looking like a stain, a stain that contrasted roughly with that tiring white.

She placed her right hand on the sink, her pale fingers grasping tightly at the cold ceramic, her black locks sliding off her shoulder and her upper arm as she was trying to stand.

But then her eyes flashed while locking onto something different.

Black, ordinate signs on her shoulder.

_What...?_

She touched them with the fingers of her free hand, still kneeling exhausted. Since she couldn't focus them directly, she returned to the reflection of the mirror.

_This can't be. _

They were numbers. Three simple numbers.  
'925' written on her arm.

Her head began pulsing with rage.  
Those numbers were quite plain, actually. They were crying out loud that her personality had just died. That she wasn't Tifa anymore. She didn't even care to remember when they'd done it to her, because its significance itself was stunning her brutally. Because it was a mark - it was a _brand_.

"_No 925. Captured in Niebelheim. Right?" Sephiroth's flat voice echoed in her mind._

_I'm not a number. I_ was not _a number._

She scratched the number with her nails, but as she had feared, it was totally futile.  
Her eyes were wide, and her lips contracted in a grimace during her attempt to use her brain.

So what was that supposed to mean? The idea was growing more and more explicit in her mind - _she was a slave_. But _she_, Tifa Lockhart, simply would _never _be able to tolerate such a thing. It was like a clash between opposite forces.

925.

_Now I'm someone's property. Now I'm _Sephiroth's _property._

That was disgusting. She didn't know much about Sephiroth. But maybe that was not exact. Because Sephiroth was famous, so famous, better still: _infamous_.  
There wasn't a single person in the world, not even the hermits retired in Niebelheim's mountains who didn't know about Sephiroth, The General.

And there wasn't a single person among them who wouldn't have described him as a _brutal bastard_.  
But, never could she have imagined that her life was going to be completely annihilated for his fault. She could never have imagined that war they were all talking about actually reach Niebelheim, and ruin her perfect life, that unnatural fairy tale she was living.

_Because it was too perfect to be true, wasn't it, Tifa?_

She removed her dirty top to see if she had some other unwanted tattoo, and let it fall on the floor like a dead leaf. Nothing. Just her black bra on her pale skin, which even there managed to be filthy with mud, and fading small green spots.

_So they've healed from the damn poison just to throw me in this shit. Hell no._

She looked at the tattoo again. They had reduced her life to a tabula rasa, and she could accept it. But she was not going to accept _that_.

_I am no one's!_ No one else_'s! And first of all I'm not a mad General's!_

Tifa was sure about it now - she didn't want that tattoo.

She started glancing furiously over the shelves, until she saw what she was searching for. She crashed the little bottle to the ground, and without waiting she picked up the most decent fragment of glass she could find.

---------

"Yes. Yes. No. I've already told you, Greg." the General's voice was as cold as usual. He was sitting on a black chair, his back to his desk, holding the phone in his left hand and a pencil in his right one, occasionally making notes on a big map of the world opened on the white table, but most of the time glancing outside the grand glass wall which looked onto the breathtaking cliffs of the North Continent. He had always liked the sight of the sea while working.

Sephiroth turned quickly to his desk, tapping the pencil on the map. "Alright. Send me the report about that explorative mission they should be doing. And _do not _let an entire month pass away before I receive it, like you did last time."

A flow of hastily pronounced superficial apologies could be heard from the receiver.

"And I trust you to report this all to ShinRa as soon as possible." pause of silence "No, I don't want to have anything to do with that bunch of idiots right now."

Greg's _Yes sir _clearly ended the conversation, and Sephiroth put the phone back in its place, his eyes lingering on the world map.

Practically, the war had ended.

Sephiroth had finally came back home, back to his isolated palace, less than a week ago, after the seizing of the neutral city of Niebelheim.  
Quite a stupid deed from ShinRa, by the way, Nibelheim useful at nothing more than building up one of their bloody reactors.

ShinRa, the massive industrial corporation that, especially after the most recent events, ruled the world, wanted Mako. And after having known that Mako was spilling abundantly somewhere among those mountains forgotten by the rest of the world, they hadn't waited a single second to take control of the whole area, never mind Niebelheim had nothing to do with the War of Wutai.

Sephiroth was never meant to approve or disapprove ShinRa's orders. He was just supposed to _fulfill_ them.

_Thank God it's all over for a while._

ShinRa had won the war against Wutai, the last massive battle having taken place the month before. And he, The General, had of course not failed. With an utterly outstanding victory had written the word '_End' _down a war that had dragged itself on for four years.

The first two years had been quite troublesome for ShinRa; but after they had entrusted Sephiroth - the surprise of the highest Soldier Elite, the Monster, the _God_, as many liked to call him - the command of all ShinRa army, after they had made that man _the _General, the war had become pathetically easy. Because it was _he_, it was _Sephiroth_, with his extraordinary ability, making all seem pathetically easy. Not a single mission in the hundreds ShinRa had charged him to do, not a single one he and his devoted troops had ever failed, not even the impossible ones. On more than one occasion ShinRa had asked him to create another miracle.

And in two years, he had done such miracles that people believed he could do anything.

They feared him, yet they respected him. Even ShinRa was being cautious and soft towards him, because they knew perfectly what everyone thought.  
That it was Sephiroth the victor of the Wutainese war and not ShinRa.

Despite that, none dared to describe him as the good hero. His reputation of the glacial heartless General was so far not only a legend, and all the people who had met him couldn't help describing the same sensations he provoked.

In the presence of General Sephiroth you felt like being _nullified_.

While he still had his hand on the phone, his gaze happened to drop on the back of it. On those teasing little wounds on his perfect skin. And as if they were a bad signal, he actually heard a worrying shriek - a woman's shriek - coming from an unidentified part of the palace.

_Don't tell me._  
Sephiroth smirked and rolled his eyes, closing neatly the map and putting it into a drawer_.  
Bad news has arrived._

He was able to understand distinctively that the screams had grown louder, and that they were coming closer and closer to his studio.

_They_ do _know they'd better not to disturb me when it's not strictly necessary._

Now the screams had all been suffocated by someone else's voice, but the calm seemed to be only apparent. And still those paces had almost reached his door.

Finally, someone knocked.

"Come in" Sephiroth snapped harshly, unwillingly standing up.

Though, the scene, which appeared him on the doorstep, was surely more curious than he had expected.  
There was Nicolle, that nervous girl, head of the housemaids, carrying and pushing _someone_ with angry expression.

And in the very first moment he placed his eyes on that someone, recognition didn't take long to arrive.

That black hair was too messy and long not to be noticed, and that fiery stance even in those terrible conditions was too peculiar to be forgotten.

_Her_ again.

The woman he hadn't been able to extort the name yet bent down, trying to get rid of Nicolle's grasp, then when she stood up stubbornly, she finally showed herself to him full-sized. She wasn't hiding her face anymore, and her crimson eyes were staring at him with hate and something different - something _strange_.

She looked seriously ugly. Her cheeks were dug by her excessive thinness. Not to mention the rest of her body. Her being half naked, with just a black bra covering the upper part of her body, he could easily see all her ribs sticking out. Her breast were probably the only womanly part that degradation had left her, but Sephiroth wasn't paying the least attention to it.

_This is just… disgusting._

On the other hand, Tifa, in the exact same moment she placed her eyes on Sephiroth, felt like having been ruthlessly smacked by something unspeakable. Back in that white room, she hadn't wanted to look at him, but _now_.

She had already seen the General in some generic archive pictures, or in the rare stolen photos, which portrayed him oblivious of being photographed. But the image of him there, right in front of her, towering in his height, was so, so far from what she could have ever seen in a photo. It was something stunning, intoxicating and frightening.

She had to struggle very hard to remain still like she was, because what Sephiroth was indirectly doing to her was terrible: his aura invested her, scared her, brought to her mind _those _images…

_It's still too painful thinking about that... It still hurts... Just a little bit longer… I don't want to think about that…_

When her eyes met his- unnatural green, blurred eyes - she could perceive that something was going _indeed _in the exact wrong way. Maybe she _was _his, in a way, and no matter how hard she could try, there wasn't going to be a way to avoid it.

_Subservience _was the feeling she had in her mind_.  
_She was putting so much effort against that overflowing conviction, she was releasing all the _hate _she had in store not to fall in that deadly trap, not to become one's _possession_, not to become _Sephiroth's _possession.

Though, it was exhausting to fight against that embodied amazing perfection. Perfection who, by the way, was now staring at her in utter disgust as she easily read on his flawless face.

"General... Sir... This woman… the newcomer…she was trying to… she was _stabbing_ her shoulder where she has the identification number…" Nicolle's voice interrupted the moment, and General Sephiroth turned to her.

The housemaid was shaking Tifa's arm significantly. It was abundantly bleeding, the red liquid running down to her hand.

It wasn't a deep cut, surely nothing serious, but - Sephiroth thought - that woman had guts. While looking at her pouring blood, Sephiroth slowly realized the rational - still so insane - _genius_ there was in all that.

_She doesn't want to be a slave...? Fine then, she just_ cancels _the only thing that proves she's a slave._

And General Sephiroth laughed, a freezing laugh that Tifa would gladly have avoided to hear.

"What…. What are you laughing at?" Tifa managed to blurt out, her mind gradually beginning to blur. And also, she managed to put _anger_ in her voice, when even anger was flowing away, leaving only despair.

The second after Nicolle grabbed her hair. "How _dare _you speak that way to the Master when you're not spoken to!" the girl hissed in her ear.

But Sephiroth raised his hand.  
"Nicolle. It' ok. Let _me_ handle this." there was a cruel smile on his face. He was staring at Tifa now, but the woman looked elsewhere. He could easily see something inside her was breaking down right now. Her eyes were dancing randomly to the left and to the right, her hands trembling on her chest.

_Perfect. By the way, she's not_ immortal _I guess._

Still, Sephiroth had the suspicion that if he got closer or did something wrong to that woman, she would lit up suddenly and catch him out of guard _again_.

"For the second, and I shall _hope_, last time: what is your name?" Sephiroth asked.

There was just one meter between them. They were standing in the middle of the room. Nicolle was enjoying the show from a safe corner.

Tifa inhaled, and bit her lower lip to ease the painful pulses her wounded arm was giving her. She peeked up at him, her flashing eyes half-hidden by her black hair, and her lips curving into a smile as wicked as his.  
"I'm _not _number 925, that's for sure." she replied with hoarse voice.

This hit Sephiroth straight to the point.  
"Say. You still have energy for that? You still want to _argue_ with me?" he moved closer, just a little closer, but those few inches were enough to make her feel oppressed.

No, she didn't have energy left for anything else than standing on her own feet now. She was faltering, but didn't want to give in.

"Don't constrict me to use brute force. I don't want to dirty my hand with you _again_, either." Sephiroth snorted, while caressing the four scratches on his hand.

Tifa rolled her head, staring cautiously at Sephiroth, the waving barrier of her hair still protecting her from direct eye contact, which surely she couldn't have sustained, especially in that condition.  
"You know what. I'm not less disgustedthan you are, _Master_..." she snapped in a mocking tone.

Her mind wasn't disordered enough not to let her grasp the vague suspicion she had pushed it too far. Anyway, she had no time for repenting.

The second after she had spoken those rushed words, while they were still lingering in the air, Sephiroth's knee stroke harshly, painfully her stomach, leaving her literally breathless. Instantly she bent down, collapsing on his leg; her forehead hit his chest in a completely unpleasant manner for both of them, still necessary consequence of their actions.

Tifa was now too dizzy and woeful to dodge and maybe even to notice it, while Sephiroth was too satisfied by the sight of that woman finally fainting at his knees to have the spectacle ruined.

Tifa coughed difficultly for air, her side rubbing against his, his long glowing silver hair brushing her cheek for an instant with the coldness of a specter while her hand was trying vainly to catch the leather of his pants. But there was no way: she was so low, low on the ground again, while moving tentatively on the floor of the studio, and respiration was still a hard thing to do.

She felt worthless and defeated.

Nonetheless, she pointlessly punched Sephiroth's leg, using her wounded arm. Useless to say, hitting Sephiroth in that moment was as constructive as hitting a wall.

"_I am _no _slave_! No slave at _all_!" she breathed while staring at the floor. But all her words and her punch could arouse in Sephiroth was a chuckle.  
And then, out of the blue, she threw up. This, even given the situation, surprised her herself. That had been…a different nausea. Coming from somewhere… _something_ inside her.

_This can't be._  
She thought terrified. In any case, she could hardly go beyond mere suspicions right there.

"You're _hopeless_. Undoubtedly more hopeless than I could ever have imagined." he frowned, studying Tifa as if she was a specimen. "Nicolle!" he snapped then "Give this woman a rag."

At his words the housemaid mechanically reached Tifa, and let her rag fall on the floor inches from where she was lying.

"You may leave now" he was addressed to Nicolle again.

"Yes, sir." the girl kneeled for a second in front of him, then left the room in a few hurried paces.

Sephiroth and Tifa were alone. He began walking around her, and every time she felt his shadow falling on her back, chills ran down her spine.

"So you don't want to be a slave, milady" Sephiroth said with false pity. He sighed, and then slowly reached his sitting place at his desk. "We don't know each other very well, but since you've surprised me pretty much with all this stunt, I'll make you the courtesy of giving you some basic information about me," he leaned forward to see Tifa better. He would say she was dead, if her bony chest wasn't raising regularly to breathe. Though, she gave no sign of hearing what he was saying. He went on anyway. "The first thing is that I don't like to play around like this. The second is that I don't like people who don't respect me. The third and last one, is that I tend to _eliminate_ things and people I don't like. Now, it's up to you do the math."

Tifa didn't move nor replied. She touched her stomach, unable to get rid of that strange nausea and that presentiment. She didn't mind wasting her own life at that point - but what if… if…

"I'm doing the math for you, just in case your brains are momentarily out of service." Sephiroth continued. Each and every one of his words was like a stab. "Here is your last chance: take the damn rag and wipe the floor you've _contaminated_ with your blood and relatives, or end your life _here_ and _now_," he paused, reordering some sheets scattered on the desk.

That was really the end of it.

And, with exhausting slowness, Tifa moved her hand towards the rag. Until she actually reached and grabbed it, Sephiroth wasn't sure whether that woman was going to admit wholly her defeat or not. But when he saw her humiliated expression, even if there were still - _still_...! - hints of stubbornness and anger in it, he was sure; willingly or not, she had just become his slave.

"Bravo. I see we're starting to understand each other," he stated right before returning to his work. But after all, he _knew_ he was so far from understanding that woman it was not even funny.

Tifa smeared the rag right on that colorless liquid on the floor, turning her face away from Sephiroth.

And with that, her bright new career as a slave had officially begun.

**End of Chapter 2

* * *

**

**Author'sNotes**: So I've made it with chapter 2... I really want to say that I would never continued this story if I haven't had the support of all you guys who reviewed and told me the story was worth continuing. A huge thank you to _all _of you, but a special mention to Faerlyte and Labrat Seph's, who both had cared to fix my stupid errors. I owe you something, really.  
Now about this chapter… I would like if some of you could tell me how I'm doing with Sephiroth's character… I am really afraid of writing Sephiroth, because I think he and Cloud are the most difficult character to write about (maybe because they're both psychos? Yep.)

Swamp-eyes.


	3. The Weapons' Room

**Subservience **

* * *

**Chapter 3  
****The weapons' room.**

* * *

_  
Make me feel like a battle, that cannot end in peace  
__Make me feel like running, as if I've lost my nerve  
__Make me feel like crying, tears I don't deserve._

_(Ben Harper)_

_

* * *

"_Miss Tifa! Miss_ Tifa..!" _

Tifa, the rag in her hand as usual, turned to the woman who was calling her. She _hated _hearing her name pronounced _there_. She would largely have preferred not to exist anymore, so hearing someone call her was painful in a way. She was too ashamed of herself.

She had been in Sephiroth's palace for a few days now. She shared the room with a blonde housemaid, Jocelyn, a woman in her earl thirties, probably. The girl was nice, but kind of scared all the time, as if she was expecting that something terrible could suddenly happen to her without any reason. She had helped Tifa with her wounded arm, anyway, and she was the only person in that hell who treated her like a _human being_.  
Whereas with Sephiroth she had struggled not to reveal her name, she had told it to Jocelyn the very first time she had asked.

"Jo. What's the problem?" Tifa examined Jocelyn. She was looking scared, as always. She was afraid of Sephiroth, she was afraid of Nicolle. There wasn't a single thing that didn't upset her, even if she had been living in the palace almost from her own birth.

"Miss Aeris is coming. Have you met her yet..?" Jocelyn asked her hastily.

Tifa, unlike Jocelyn, couldn't care less about anything.  
"No, I guess I haven't. The only people I've met here are you, _pleasant _Nicolle, and _adorable _Master Sephiroth.." Tifa snapped sarcastically, while Jocelyn widened her eyes and put a finger on her mouth.

"_Please_, Miss Tifa! Lower your voice… If someone _heard_…"

Tifa sighed.  
"Let them hear, then. I really can't imagine _anything _worse than this… so I guess I've nothing to lose.."  
She frowned, arching her refined eyebrow and biting her lip. '_Or maybe I _do _have something to lose…'_

By the way, _Aeris_.

The name sounded familiar in many ways. _'Deja-vu? Newspapers?' _Where had she heard it before? '_If she's half a bastard as _Sephiroth_, I guess this won't be amusing at all…'_

Aeris was clearly a female name. And a woman in that house could probably be only three things: a housemaid, Sephiroth's mother, Sephiroth's lover. Since the way Jocelyn was speaking about her - with a sort of devotion and deep respect, even superior than the respect she had for Sephiroth - suggested that Aeris was an important person in the palace, only the last two possibility were left.

Though, both of them made Tifa laugh. '_A _monster _like him can't have either a mother or a lover…'_

Tifa actually _tried_ to imagine Sephiroth with a woman. Nothing but sex could possibly come out of that. That made it even more difficult to conjecture how Aeris could be.  
The most logical hypothesis was that Aeris was a heartless, cold woman, and _yes_, why not, as big a bastard as Sephiroth. Either that or one of his bitches.  
'_Because none with feelings could by any chance stand that man for more than a week…'_

_  
_Before meeting her, had someone told her how Aeris really was, she wouldn't have believed it.

---

When Aeris entered the room she and Jocelyn were in, Tifa had previously gone so far with imagination that her brains refused to realize she was indeed the person she had been thinking of, even when Jocelyn quickly kneeled down at her sight.

First of all, she was beautiful. But hers was not an arid beauty, like Sephiroth's. She was beautiful and _warm_. Her pretty pink lips attempting a shy smile, her emerald eyes gently looking at Tifa. She was dressed in pink; her dress was smooth and not showy at all. Ared belt was the only part of the outfit that made it look classy.. Her long brown hair was coiled in a high ponytail, held up by a red ribbon.

But beside the physical appearance, it was her manner that struck Tifa. She moved in a tentative, unsure and even cautious way. Her paleness was unjustifiable for the luxury she lived in, plus she had puffy eyes, as if she had just stopped crying.

"Good day. I'm Aeris Gainsborough." she said, her voice almost trembling, smiling at Tifa. Then she rubbed her eyes, and tried to smile brighter. "You must be the newcomer. Sephiroth…" and her voice hesitated slightly when she pronounced his name. "Sephiroth has - uhm… _mentioned_ you a few times. We've met before, but I guess you don't remember… you were kind of - uhm…"

But suddenly Tifa remembered.  
The white room and Sephiroth's boot pressing on her throat.  
_°°Please, Sephiroth, stop!°°  
_Her voice. Her aura.

'_Her? Sephiroth's woman?'_

Tifa was so surprised and incredulous she didn't even notice that Aeris was holding her hand out to her.

"Is something wrong?" Aeris asked sweetly, moving closer to Tifa.

"N-no." Tifa shook her head. "Nothing's wrong"  
She squeezed Aeris' hand, and immediately felt like melting. That woman was… there was just something about her that relaxed her completely.

'_She can't be his woman.'_

"I still don't know your name.." Aeris touched her forehead with the hand Tifa had squeezed, closing her eyes for a moment. Definitely, she didn't look well.

"I'm…" Tifa faltered, but then, when her eyes met Aeris', she replied simply "Tifa"

"Pleased to meet you, Tifa. I want to apologise personally for what Sephiroth has done to you. I've heard… voices…" Aeris lowered her gaze. "But I guess there's really no excuse for that."

Tifa, who was still trying to pick up the pieces, couldn't reply anything to this. The fact that she was apologising instead of Sephiroth made no sense at all, plus it didn't look like it was the first time she had to do such a thing.

'_Is she.. Sort of intimidated? Submitted? Just like_ me_, even if she's no slave?'_

Fragments of flashback occurred to her mind.  
She was in the white room again. And Aeris was holding Sephiroth away from her, touching his shoulders, without arousing in him any sort of repulsion.

"Excuse me. I can't accept an apology from you, for the simple fact you've done nothing wrong to me. The one who should apologize here is someone _else_." Tifa said fiercely, while Jocelyn was looking terrified.

Aeris blushed.

It looked like none in ages had showed such signs of rebellion and pride in front of her. She probably felt ashamed both for justifying Sephiroth and for failing in it. So she quickly changed the subject.

"Anyway, I'm here to assign you the jobs for the day. Jocelyn, you may proceed as usual, and clean all the bedrooms. As for you…" Aeris turned to Tifa.  
The black haired woman was at least five centimeters higher than her, and her crimson eyes were not far from scaring her.  
"Sephiroth wants you to take care of the weapons' room." she finally said, hints of disbelief in her own voice. She bit her lower lip, then touched Tifa's shoulder delicately. "Please, be careful.." she recommended.

Tifa frowned, a single repetitive image still piercing her mind. Aeris holding Sephiroth's shoulder. But she still couldn't manage to sort out their relationship.

Having her been not so concentrated, she would have noticed that Aeris caution about that weapons room should have suggested her it was not going to be a _normal _job.

"That's fine with me," Tifa replied flatly.

Aeris breathed deeply, and then smiled again. It surely was a sweet smile but - it was so _sad _deep inside.  
"Good day to both of you. Now if you excuse me.." she bent her head for a moment, and then left the room.

---

The second after Aeris had disappeared, Tifa wanted to see her again already. That girl was definitely interesting, strange in a way. She was a _suffering_ being. And just thinking about it made Tifa feel angry.  
'_It's_ his _fault. I just know it.'_

"I can't believe it…" Tifa said to herself, shaking slowly her head.

"You mean.. Aeris?" Jocelyn asked timidly.

Tifa, who had momentarily forgotten about the other woman, nodded in confirmation.  
"Yes… she is so… she looked _so_…" she gestured nervously with her hands, but couldn't express in words what she meant. Basically, Aeris was still a kind of mystery.

'_Next time I see her, I have to study her more carefully.'_

Why she was so interested in Aeris was hard to tell. Partly was because she felt they were similar, in some odd way. And partly, even if it was arduous, _very _arduous to admit, there was a part in the depths of her ego that yearned to know something more about Sephiroth, even if it had to be through Aeris.

"How come they're together?" Tifa asked again, simply excluding on principle, given the situation, that they actually might be in love with each other.

Jocelyn surely didn't seem the gossipy type, but at that question she looked around to check none was watching, and then lowered her voice, as if they were two conspirators.

"Miss Aeris is Professor Gast's daughter… and you should know very well he occasionally works for ShinRa. Since Sephiroth is practically ShinRa's pupil, they think an eventual wedding might drive the Professor closer to ShinRa, and make their economical partnership more formal."

"I see." Tifa snapped with a disgusted face.  
'_ShinRa bitch.'_

But there was still something wrong about that all.  
Did Aeris really look like she was just stuck there unwillingly? Both yes and no. She was far neither carefree nor reckless. Tifa sensed there was something more complex in that girl and in her whole behavior, though she had absolutely no means to clear that up in that moment.

"This is absurd." Tifa concluded, narrowing her eyes.

"I understand what you're saying, Miss Tifa… Aeris is an angel… while Sephiroth is - uhm.." Jocelyn paused thoughtfully, trying to find a word that suited but didn't offend their master.

"While Sephiroth is a hopeless bastard.." Tifa smirked, discovering that pronouncing those words actually relieved her and gave her a huge sense of satisfaction.

"_Miss Tifa_..!" Jocelyn gasped.

Tifa sighed at the excessive fear of the other maid.  
"Let's end this here, Jo. Show me where this damn weapons' room is"

---

Tifa had tried to ignore Jo completely on the way to the weapons room, even if she kept repeating it was strange and worrying that Sephiroth has assigned her the weapons' room already. Also that she should be careful not to ruin anything in there. Not that there was something Jo _didn't _find worrying.

But when Tifa remained alone on the threshold of that room, the door wide open in front of her, she actually _did _freeze.

They called it the weapons room, and it really was.

As usual, the walls, the tiles, the entire room was white. This already got on her nerves. The monotony of the white was largely interrupted by the innumerable swords hung on the wall.

Swords, just everywhere. Not dead swords; they _transpired_ death, but were vivid and screaming themselves. Every time she placed her eyes on a different one, horrible visions blew her mind, relentlessly.

'_I can't. I really can't stay here much longer.'_

What was she supposed to do? Something like _polishing_ all those swords?

'_I can't even touch them...'_

The room itself was not very big. It was a square about six meters each side. But the swords… there were tens and tens. She could have _sworn _none of them had failed to kill at least one man. Still they were there, exposed like trophies, of all lengths, sizes, even coloured in many different ways, bloodstains on many of them; a few were ruined at the point of being useless now.

'_Are these all his? Did he wield all these swords?'_

Then, inevitably, _the _sword caught her attention.

It was right in front of her, just on the opposite side of the room. Tifa held her breathe for some seconds before stepping towards it.  
It clearly had its special place, since the free space on the wall around it was considerably bigger than the one among the other swords, which were practically pressed against each other.

"The _Masamune_..." Tifa whispered, feeling a strange tension growing inside her.

The sword was really massive. It was something like… two meters long? She couldn't be sure it was not longer at any rate.  
When she reached the Masamune, she instinctively touched its blade, drawing her hand away the second after. The energy she could perceive in it was frightening. It was like all the lives the sword had stolen were still grieving underneath the cold surface of the shimmering blade.  
Tifa's eyes ran up the blade, until they reached its hilt. Black threads were intertwined forming regular textures, and the squared grey metal which separated it from the blade had four triangular holes.

Unable to contain the urge, Tifa grabbed the Masamune's hilt, curving her slender fingers around it. She attempted to pull it forcefully out of its hanging place, accompanying the effort with a snort.  
It didn't move at all.  
She went for it again, more impetuously this time, but all she obtained was to move it a few inches, to than let it fall in its place again, the metallic clang resounding in the room. With just that, and she was already breathing hard.

'_You're weak, Tifa. You're damn weak by now and you know it.'_

She still couldn't manage to get her eyes off the Masamune, though. She touched the cold steel once again, and then she caressed the sharp edge, knowing that a little more pressure would have cost her a cut.  
Getting even closer to the sword, she was able to see her own reflection in the silvery iron. Her widened red eye staring at her.

A stupid, childish impulse caught her one more time, attracting her lips right on the glowing blade. It was just a fragment of second. But that was enough.

"Milady _Tifa_.. Is something wrong? Experiencing Stockholm Syndrome already?" That unmistakable, irritating, cocky, sarcastic - yet _velvety_- voice.

Tifa leaped back from the sword, turning rapidly to the man who had just spoken. Turning to _Sephiroth_.

And there he was. That unnerving man, was leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb and crossing his arms on his chest, a bastard smile tugging the corner of his lips.

"Can't kiss me, so you kiss my sword? That's quite an interesting choice, Tifa," he laughed, remaining still in his position, his silver locks falling on his shoulder as he tilted his head.

"To the hell with you _and _the Stockholm Syndrome…" Tifa hissed vehemently, cracking her knuckles. But she felt the blood rushing to her head, heating her face for the shame.  
'_What on earth came over me a minute ago?'_

By the way, there was something sounding horribly inadequate in his words. It took a while before she managed to get what exactly.

"My _name_. How do you know my name?" she frowned, showing him her profile, in a feeble attempt to escape from eye contact. Her gaze was locked to his anyway.

Sephiroth stepped towards her. He walked in a graceful way, but there was something in his movements that made him resemble a predator.

"Oh, right, your _name_." he smiled wickedly "Aeris spilled it to me… She didn't want to, at first, but I guess I'm quite convincing, you know.." he sighed "Tifa… _Tee-fa_…" Sephiroth spelled with false concentration "Really a trashy name by the way… or maybe I shall go for abbreviations? Teef? Tiffy?"

Tifa didn't get what that man was doing exactly. It looked like he was teasing her without any rational reason; just for his personal pleasure. Just to see her anger growing. And he was succeeding. It was irritating. To hear her name pronounced by him was irritating. To imagine Aeris mistreated by him was irritating.

"So… Is it Ti-fa? _Tee-fa.._?" Sephiroth continued.

Definitely, he was doing that on purpose.

"Stop with that already! And don't call me Tifa. It's _Lockhart_," she snapped, tightening her fists and stepping towards him.

He touched lightly his chin with his fingers, narrowing his eyes.  
"Lock-_heart_..? Was it supposed to be.. something like.. _Ambiguous_? It has to be _Miss Lockhart _then..? And maybe I shall kneel every time I see you?" he asked in a mocking tone.

"You make me _sick_…"

For a second, she removed her hair from her eyes, and Sephiroth's eyes lit up in attention in that moment.

Then, he hit his own chest with his hand, turning his head over as if he had just been wounded.  
"Ouch. That _hurts_, Miss _Lockhart_, that really hurts. You shouldn't go so hard on me, I get sensitive."

And with that, Tifa was infuriated. He was so far she had the suspicion she could have said anything, and he would have been completely untouched by it.  
He was _playing_. Like the cat with the mouse.  
'_And it seems I am the damn mouse right now.'  
_She desperately searched a way to shove him off his throne, but it was _hard_.

"I thought you said before that you didn't like to play around like this…" she let her words flow there casually. And there actually _was _silence for an instant.

But then Sephiroth whistled.

"I see; you're so _obsessed _with me you even know my quotes by heart… no doubt it's Stockholm Syndrome…"

'_Fuck..!'  
_He had just trapped her again. Only one statement, and there they were, her own words retorting against herself. He was smart.

And now she didn't feel like replying. Once again all she could do was swallow her pride, no matter how much she hated it.

Meanwhile, Sephiroth began to wander around the room, examining his swords. He caressed one, two, three of them. At the fourth, she stopped, looking intensely at it. It was long, not as the Masamune though, and it had red Wutainese letters engraved in its blade. Its curved shape made it similar to a saber

"You know, Miss Lockhart. I really have a thing for this room. I always hesitate to let anyone in, especially if they have to _touch _my swords," the second after, he extracted the sword from its place, wielding it with incredible speed. The hiss of the cut air pierced Tifa's ears. "Not all my servants are trustworthy enough to be allowed in here. But I have allowed _you_… because you…"  
He paused, moving his eyes from the sword to Tifa, who was looking back at him in a tense way.  
"You look like a fighter"  
Sephiroth concluded simply, nodding just a little to himself in confirmation, throwing the Wutainese sword in the air, to then catch it with his left hand, examining the back of his right hand frowning a little. He showed it to her.  
The wounds she had procured him with her nails were almost gone, so she didn't even understand what he meant.  
"Not many of my rivals are alive. And even fewer have the honour to affirm they have wounded me."

"What do you _want_?" she cut him off harshly; she was starting to get rather irked at the sight of all those swords.

Sephiroth smiled, while rotating the sword in his left hand like it was the easiest thing in the world.  
"Say, Lockhart. Can you wield a sword?" he asked slyly.

And her heart began thumping faster at the question.  
"No I can't" she replied almost automatically.

And that was a lie. A rather large lie.

* * *

"_No! Oh man… that's the completely wrong way!"_

_As soon as she heard that voice, Tifa turned to the blond boy who was speaking, her brilliant black hair waving around._

"_What? No, wait, this was not wrong!" she snorted, drawing rapidly invisible forms in the air with the sword she was holding "Or else, the problem is just_ you_, Cloud. You can't explain yourself, that's it!" she exclaimed, provoking him on purpose._

_Cloud let his huge sword fall on the ground, its blue light dying down in the moment it lost contact with his hand. He was smiling, while running his hand through his rebel blond hair._

"_I can't explain myself..? No Teef… the problem is_ you_!" he got closer to her, and pointed his fingers on her forehead. She giggled at that. Giggled softly, like a little girl, and then removed Cloud's finger from where it was. But he didn't give in, and re-placed it in its exact former place._

"_You are not enough cold-blooded to be a swordswoman… You're so_ impulsive_, Teef.." he tried to explain, running his finger from her forehead down to the tip of her nose._

"_Ah ah.. Hey stop it!" she grabbed his hand, but let go of it the very second after. Cloud chuckled and pulled a lock of her hair. _

_She peered involuntarily at his neck, and trailed down to his chest, which the half-buttoned shirt left in sight.  
__And in that moment she knew it. She knew he was right.  
__She was so_ not _cold-blooded.  
_

_

* * *

_

"No I can't."

That had been a little to rushed, and of course Sephiroth noticed it.

"You can't? Well. Let's see." He waved the sword a few times in the air, then threw it towards Tifa, its blade rotating regularly, almost touching the ceiling.

The spectral whistle it produced was distracting Tifa, who was paralysed and could barely see the sword coming.

Before they both knew it, Tifa had caught the sword's hilt with her right hand, and was now aiming it directly at Sephiroth chest, assuming a fighting stance. If there hadn't been a meter between him and the tip of the blade, he could have startled at her sudden reaction.

But after a moment of religious silence, he laughed, and shook his head significantly.  
"Ah ah…. If you can't use a sword, Miss, then I've never gotten laid." he snapped sarcastically, giving her his back, slightly manifesting the intention of leaving the room.

Tifa rolled her eyes, moving the Wutainese sword a little in her hand.  
"Well, who knows..?" she replied him even more sarcastically then he had, sneering. But he didn't seem in the mood to catch the provocation.

The silver glow of his hair waving on his back had something _ghostly_.  
'_So, you've played enough with me and now you're leaving, you untouchable bastard…'  
_The urge which was impelling in her chest could not be contained anymore, and all she could do was being driven by it.

She launched the sword in direction of his back, using all her remaining strength. Apparently, it was not enough.

In a heartbeat, Sephiroth turned rapidly, snatching one of the swords hung on the wall with a swift movement, and then catching the flying Wutainese one.

Tifa had absolutely no time to even understand what was going on, that a deafening sound inches from her ears stunned her, making her shut her eyes.

When she finally recovered from the shock, and reopened her eyes, she was holding her breath. The two blades were almost completely hammered into the wall, and Sephiroth was still holding them, encaging her among himself, the wall behind her and the swords. Right on her back, she could feel the hung Masamune and its blade sending chills on her bare nape.

Sephiroth was dangerously and scarily near, and even if he was doing nothing, she was already _too _upset. Not a single word could have escaped her lips as he lowered his head slightly to fill the exaggerate distance between them. He was damn tall, and she had to raise her chin to look him in his eyes. His hair were falling on the sides of his face, like an eerie curtain, shadowing his features a little.

But it was not enough not to make Tifa notice he was absolutely flawless.

"_Never _do it, Miss Lockhart. Never play with fire." he articulated slowly and rather threateningly.

She was paralysed, but she wanted to run away as far as she could at the same time.  
'_Just like a fool.'_

Tifa would probably have exploded if Sephiroth hadn't slid away, leaving her scared to death, only the wall preventing her from falling on her knees, and the blades still inches from both her cheeks, with the slight consciousness he could have killed her, having he reallywanted to.

'_He scares me. He scares me like hell.' _

Her scarlet eyes were showing much of herself now, much more that she would have liked.  
But fortunately, Sephiroth didn't seem interested in mind-reading, and reached the door.

"So, Miss, I think we've had enough _fun _for today. Have all the swords in order, and, also, I want the wall repaired."

Tifa turned to the two impaled blades, and felt something crunching under her boots. She looked down, pieces of plaster were lying around.  
Again, she felt something uncomfortable in the room. Even if she couldn't see him - and _didn't want _to see him - she perceived Sephiroth had not left the room yet.  
'_But there's no way he's going to make me feel that defenceless again. No way.'_

She carefully took one of the swords - the smallest one - with both her hand; not much effort was needed, that the sword almost fell down by itself, dragging along a considerable amount of plaster and concrete. Tifa threw it angrily on the tiles.

The sensation of being watched had not disappeared, though.

There was the Wutainese sword left. She gave a quick look at the engraved red symbols, but since she didn't know the East language, they ment nothing to her. She clenched her fingers around the hilt, and pulled and struggled, until the hilt didn't escape from her hands, and she almost fell backward.  
But the sword was still there, completely unmoved.  
'_Stupid curved saber…'  
_She seized the sword again, clenching her teeth, and a cry escaped her lips for the effort. Nothing. Her fingers were sore, and she _already _felt tired.

Tifa frowned, and reached for the sword's hilt for the third time. Too bad, when she noticed she wasn't touching _exactly _the hilt, it was too late. It was Sephiroth's skin brushing against her palm, and as soon as she realised it, she jerked her hand back as if she had bruised herself.

On the other hand, Sephiroth, apparently void of emotions as always, stared briefly at her: his piercing emerald eyes nearly knocked her off her feet.  
"This was pretty _pathetic _for a swordswoman," he sighed. He rapidly extractedthe sword from the wall with ridiculous ease, and then handed it to her.  
"Here." he said simply.

For a moment, Tifa couldn't believe what was happening. Was _Sephiroth_ - that insufferable sadistic psycho - _helping _her, _of all things_?

She probably had a priceless face in that very moment; and Sephiroth surely noticed it, because he chuckled.

"What's wrong..? Am I _too _gentleman for your standards?" he whispered, a strange smile pictured on his lips. He was still holding the sword between them.

A few seconds passed, and at that point, the fact that Tifa was not going to take the swords from him had become completely evident.

And their roles were now reversed: Tifa's expression was becoming more and more determined, while Sephiroth was the bewildered one. He shook his head in disbelief, suppressing a hint of hysterical laughter.

"Is that so, Miss Lockhart?" he lifted the sword slowly "Are you.. _Rejecting _my kindness?"

It was strange to see, even strange to imagine - but that was it. Sephiroth felt humiliated, and she could recognise signs of _human _anger and irritation for the first time. It was different from when he looked at her disgusted back then. He was looking at her like she had reached a forbidden point, from which she should have stayed away.

Insulting and despising him was one thing; but indirectly and incredibly making him do such a thing - _how _could that have happened, anyway..? - to then disdain him was completely another thing.

'None _has the right to refuse my offer. Least of all a _slave_.'_

Tifa had no time to think that it was… _peculiar _to see him that way.  
Sephiroth reacted, instantly letting the sword sliding from his right hand to his left one and thrusting it violently into the wall, not far from where it was before.

Tifa jumped back abruptly, but couldn't move farther than she was. This was too much for her, and her breaking point was not so far. Her gaze was still locked on Sephiroth, who was now releasing the sword. It was so plunged into the concrete, that if it was previously improbable for her to manage to extract it, it had now become completely _impossible_.

'_Why can't he just leave? Why can't he just leave me in peace? There's no way I'm going to cool down as long as he's here!'_

Sephiroth scolded. He too was nervous. She had pinched his pride and self-confidence. Unexpectedly and _hard_.

'_Please, leave!'_

And Tifa ultimate prayer was fulfilled. Sephiroth, who seemed to have regained the most part of his coolness, walked to the door.

Tifa was already going to let out a sigh of relief, when he stopped.

"You know what, _Miss Lockhart_. At least I can't say you're not _interesting_," he said without even turning to her, hints of sarcasm - but not _only _sarcasm - in his voice. Then he really left.

And this was all but easy to digest for Tifa. She stood there, his words echoing into her mind.

°°_At least I can't say you're not _interesting.°°

It even took a while for her to sort out the _real _meaning - all those negations confused her.  
But once it was plain, she couldn't help it. In a _very _hidden part of herself, she felt… _felt _how?

_Honoured. _

She smashed her hand painfully against the wall, while a battle was taking place in her ego.  
'_But I am honoured damn it.'  
_Tifa examined the wutainese saber hammered into the wall.  
'_Fuck him.'_

An accidental image of Sephiroth plunging it were it was blew her mind.

'_And fuck the Stockholm Syndrome.'_

**End of Chapter 3**

* * *

**Author'sNotes**: I know this chapter is long… It just came out this way, guys. Btw, someone complained because last chapter was too short.. And I thought people hated long chapters! Eh. Anyway, you can't imagine how funny it is to write these characters… really you should try it!  
I want to say 'thank you' to all my readers, reviewers and my great beta.  
I appreciated Aquarei thoughtful review.. You know you've made me change a thing in the story development… nothing major but still…  
I was tempted to open a great poll like "TifaSeph or AeriSeph..?" but I won't do it because the story's already written in my mind. 

See you with Ch 4(hopefully..)! Anyone's opinion is more than welcome!

Swamp-Eyes


	4. Fallen Heroes

**Subservience**

* * *

**  
Chapter 4  
****Fallen heroes.**

* * *

_  
So lay down  
Just let it come  
And resign your heart today  
To get blown away_

_Destroyer._

_(Crooked Fingers)_

* * *

She had thought - _hoped _- that maybe the problem would have just faded away after the first week. How wrong she had been! Constantly, relentlessly, Tifa was upset. No matter if she was working hard, sleeping, doing nothing: it was always the same. Something inside herself was always struggling, rebelling, asking for peace which couldn't possibly come. Her nerves were on edge, her muscles tightenedfor no reason at all, her brain was a congestion of thoughts. And this was _draining_ her. She would have paid for an hour - yes, even a _single _hour - of total psychological relaxation. 

And that _sword_ planted in the wall, there in the weapons room; well that was the _worst_. She wasn't strong enough to remove it - by the way, she was sure this time Sephiroth had applied himself attentively to make its extraction impossible. The result was that every time she saw it - or thought about it - it reminded her of her weakness. And it hurt. It was like the sword was hammered in her chest instead of the wall.  
'_Like a voodoo doll…_' Had he done that on purpose? '_Well he's sadistic enough to do such a thing_'

Nausea never left her, and she had developed a strange hate for food. She couldn't eat - sometimes not even drink a glass of water - without making her stomach turning upside down.  
°You can't survive on just _air_!° Jo often said those words. As if she had not enough things to worry about, now she was worried about Tifa too and scrutinized her skin and bones figure with concerned eyes every time lunch time came.

To seek a shelter from the tormenting disturbance Tifa had discovered a very interesting glass container in the bathroom, among the innumerable other little bottles, with bright yellow pills in it. Tranquilizers.

Every time the image of Sephiroth cut through her mind, and she felt the rage - or whateverit was - overtaking her, she quickly forced one - or a _couple_- of those pills down her throat. For an hour, she was an untouchable goddess, and the thought of Sephiroth could not reach her, her mind could have a break. Also, she could laugh about the whole sword thing, she could forget she was starving but couldn't eat, she could look in the mirror, her hands on her hips, and say something like '_Tee-fa? Teee-fa? Trashy name.. yeah .. Yeah… oh so I'm interesting, am I not..? Fuck! Fuck!_' But the effect was not eternal. And as soon as it vanished, she was back where she had started.

But she loved those pills as much as she hated Sephiroth.

---

Tifa had downed her daily pill two hours ago without eating anything, as usual. Much to her displeasure, she was starting to notice those pills _had_ some collateral effects: her head started to spin sometimes and she couldn't connect her thoughts. Though she preferred to blame the lack of food for that. Because she _needed_ those pills.

She had not seen Sephiroth all the day - she heard he was attending an important meeting - and still, even with him outside the palace, she felt something was wrong.

'_If I stay in this place a little bit longer, I will _explode.'

On the floor, she was dragging a large vacuum cleaner, its loud noise the only thing she could hear in the house. She had cleaned the corridors, a few bedrooms, Sephiroth's studio - and she had made herself sure to be under the effect of the yellow little pill while doing that, even if he was away.

And now, for the first time in that morning, a different noise interrupted the monotonous vacuum's. She pretended to hear nothing, and just proceeded into the big living room absentmindedly. When she heard the noise again, she couldn't but lift her gaze from the floor. And she instantly switched the vacuum cleaner off.

On the corner of the black sofa, there was Aeris. She was crying _desperately_. She was hugging her legs with her face buried in a white handkerchief, obviously trying to get a hold of herself without succeeding. Her shaking shoulders, which her dress left in sight, were pale as her hands and her arms. She looked so… so _completely_ broken down.

Tifa could not move for some seconds, her own heart breaking at that sight. She then forced herself to turn away, feeling that she was intruding in her privacy.

"Excuse me. I'm going," she said, trying to be as neutral as possible. In fact, she thought she needed one of her pills now.  
'_That bastard… _that_..' _She switched the vacuum cleaner on again to forget about it all.

Aeris, who noticed someone else's presence just in the very moment she spoke, flushed while raising her head abruptly. She was embarrassed for being caught in such a moment and tried to contain the sobs. She looked terrible.

"Wait… Tifa!" And her voice sounded terrible too.

The noise of the vacuum cleaner died down again. _'I'm not sure this will be good. _Really _not sure.'  
_Tifa looked at the other woman, who was looking back at her in a desperate search for help.  
_'This is… dangerous. I can't help her… because I _myself _…. Damn it!'_

"I beg your pardon, Miss. I didn't intend to disturb you," Tifa looked away from Aeris.  
_'She remembers my name…'_

Aeris wiped her eyes with the handkerchief. "Please, stay." she asked lowering her head, a soft and sad voice.

Tifa didn't move. The remnant effect of the pills had faded away after this, and she felt quite helpless, the first raving usual thoughts occurring to her mind Aeris.. Lord. She feared to see that girl in such a condition. But she feared even more to admit _why_.

"Please..?" Aeris' begging voice reached her again, and this time she couldn't refuse.

Tifa approached silently the sofa, while the other woman tried to comb her hair.

"God.. I must look so stupid…" she said while shaking her head slowly, her gaze lost in the void.

Tifa didn't reply. She had a bad feeling about this.

"Was it _Tifa_, right?" Aeris asked, fearing to have mistaken the name.

The black haired woman unwillingly let out a smirk. "Yeah, Tifa. Tee-fa. You find it a trashy name, too?"

As she was smirking Aeris blushed, her eyes filling of tears again. She placed a hand on her mouth, immediately repented her own words. She couldn't say sorry. What struck her, was that _Aeris _said it.

"I am so sorry… even if you don't want apologies from me I…" she hesitated, her eyes dancing all around the living room "… he.. I try to tell him - I'm so sorry, Tifa… he is… he doesn't _really_…"  
Tears were now streaming down her red cheeks again, and she brought the handkerchief back to her face.  
She raised her chin to search direct eye contact with Tifa.

Tifa understood what was going on, and she couldn't suppress a frown. Aeris noticed it, and got even more upset.

"I know what you're thinking..! Yeah, stupid spoiled girl who _protects _Sephiroth…" she really was on the edge, and her voice was trembling "You think I'm blind because I justify him? You think I don't get his real self? Tifa…"

Tifa began to panic. _'I don't want to know where this conversation is getting… I …'  
_"Miss Aeris… You don't need to…" she was trying to look as if she didn't care, but she couldn't.  
_Does this woman have a_ friend _in this place? Why's she telling me those things?'_

Aeris suddenly caught her wrist. Their gazes were locked and Tifa couldn't pretend not to see what was buried deep in Aeris' eyes anymore.  
"I never was really like you. But.. But we were more similar than you can think now. And I know you now see him as I saw him back then."

Tifa quickly get rid of the other woman's grasp. _'She has to _stop _this!'  
_"Miss Aeris… I…"

"No! Not you _too_! Please don't treat me like I'm stupid!" Aeris stood up "You all, all label me as a stupid… but if only you could understand…"

'_But I don't _want _to understand_.' Tifa was _afraid_ to understand. Though, she had no means to stop Aeris.

"I didn't like him the very first time I saw him. I mean, who could _actually _like one who makes your blood freeze in your veins? Because that's what he does, right Tifa?" Aeris was smiling knowingly to her.

'_She must stop! I don't want to hear this story. I _can't _hear this story'_

"But everyone wanted us to be together. I had no guts to refuse it, while he looked as if he didn't care at all. We started to meet each other at many ShinRa's parties, I thought it was ok. That there was nothing strange. He occasionally chatted with me on the sofas, being polite- but not kind, not sweet, not _anything_. I suppose he never disliked me. But never _liked _me. I guess at that time the situation was perfectly under control…still." Aeris expression was soft, despite all.

And at this point, Tifa was glued there, wanting to hear the story, because it was too late to ignore it.

"I don't remember exactly _when _it happened. Just a week like another, I noticed I was looking forward to the next party. When I realised I _wanted _to see him, it scared me. I thought it could all remain _formal_, that love for me was in other places, but Tifa…" she covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes widened at that memory. "I _had _to admit I had completely lost it when, one evening, he told me I was beautiful the way I looked that night. I was… I was.. I think I didn't sleep for two days. When he compliments you - you can't possibly remain indifferent."

Yes, it was going exactly there, just like she had suspected from the first moment. Now they were both slipping down too fast. Tifa couldn't stop Aeris, and Aeris couldn't stop herself.

"Since that day, it'd been a rush. It was too late to get back, I had already fallen, and hard. It has been - a nightmare. I used to be a cheerful girl, but since that day, all I could give away, I have given it to him. And - it all was a _waste_. I… I don't what he has indirectly done to me…" her voice had become shrill for she was trying to repress the cry again.

'_He has _destroyed _her.' _Tifa stood still. Her upper lip shifteda little and her only coherent thought was that she needed a pill. Desperately.  
Right in front of her, there was a broken woman. It was impossible to tell if Sephiroth had destroyed her, or if she had destroyed herself. What scared her, was that she was seeing Aeris as a self-projection.

A blood chilling image of herself, as broken down as Aeris, because of _him_, hit her, suddenly, violently. What if she couldn't help it? What if he managed to _break _her too, subtly, slowly?  
_'No! _No_! But I _was _honored. I was honored when he complimented me.'_

She wanted to take a pill. She wanted to become an untouchable goddess. She didn't want to become like _Aeris_.  
'_Am I really becoming like her? _Already_..?' _Tifa stepped back from Aeris, which looked like the tempter devil to her.

"He treats me like waste. Today's my 24th birthday. I asked him to stay home with me but he just scolded and left. But then again, I guess he treats _everyone_ like waste. But I…"

"No! Shut up!" Tifa yelled to her "you… you…should _hate _him. So don't even dare to…"

Aeris paused, and for a moment she smiled in a different way then before. "Why… why are you _that _upset?" she asked, her emerald eyes scanning Tifa's so deeply she felt naked.

Tifa stiffened, and for a second she felt as if the ground under her feet had disappeared.

Aeris laughed sadly for a second. "Even _you_..? Did he manage…?"

"NO!" pure rebellion, against Aeris, Sephiroth and even herself was surging from her heart "No! I haven't _submitted_ to him! I'm not like _you_, and never will be! Never! _Never_!"

But a small, quiet and sly voice was whispering to her ear that it was just a matter of time. Or worse, that she had _already_ submitted. That she was not strong enough to resist him.

That looking at Aeris was like looking at herself a few weeks after that day.  
'_A presage..?' _Was she already condemned? Did she have only that path in front of her, and could do nothing but follow it sooner or later?

Yes - she was _angry_. She was _mad _at that poor innocent girl, because she was mad at the part of herself which was like Aeris, or better, with the part of herself which was dangerously inclined to become like Aeris.

Aeris needed help, understanding, and Tifa did too. Still, they were too far: Aeris had reached the bottom, and had been that way for too long not to admit it with herself; Tifa was confused and furiously blind with her ego. That was why they couldn't possibly find comfort into each other.

'_I need a pill.'_

Without further explanations, Tifa abandoned the room, the vacuum cleaner and Aeris.

---

It was almost evening, a bright sunset showing itself from the glass walls of the living room, when Sephiroth returned home.

The head of the housemaids Nicolle had sent Tifa on purpose to dust - again- the rooms in which Sephiroth most likely would be. They all knew he was in bad mood whenever he returned from the meetings with ShinRa, and _no one _was really eager to have anything to do with him when he was in bad mood.  
Tifa, who had just taken _four_ pills when Nicolle came to order her what to do, had laughed at that, and just obeyed. Obviously, after an hour, the effect of the pills was _very_ far from fading. Her ears were almost whistling, and she was understanding nearly nothing of what surrounded her.

That was when Sephiroth showed up.

He entered the deserted living room in his shiny black bath-robe, his silver hair dripping wet. He couldn't repress a hint of disappointment when he saw Tifa dusting a desk full of his trophies.

"Wow. My favourite slave's here. Just what I needed to see after this great day…" he snapped sarcastically.

"Good evening to you too," she smirked back; her expression was so blank she looked almost stupid.  
_'Guess _four _pills were a little too much…'  
_Sephiroth was there. So… how was she reacting? Was she… untouched by his presence?  
_'I _am _untouched. At least - after four pills - I shall _hope _so.'_

"Hm? You look - if that's possible - even more worn-out than usual, Miss Lockhart." Sephiroth arched his eyebrow while scrutinizing her. He himself looked a little tired, while walking slowly to the sofa.

Tifa noticed with displeasure that her head was spinning. She leaned on the desk to gain stability. _'What the fuck is he doing? Talking to me as if we were _best friends_..?'  
_By the way, _no _- she was not _completely _untouched.  
_'But I am _quieter _than usual. I just _am'

Sephiroth ruffled his hair briefly , silver shimmering, water drops falling on the perfectly polished floor.

Tifa snorted. "You know. I washed that a few hours ago. You should be more careful," she moved away from the slightly, but the point she was looking at just ran away, and her sight blurred for an instant. _'Fucking pills' _She leaned on the desk again.

Meanwhile, Sephiroth sat on the sofa with a loud sigh. "I hope you're kidding, Miss. I can come here when you've just polished and throw mud on the tiles if I really want to. All you have to do is _shut up_, kneel down and polish them again. All clear?"

"Arrogant bastard…" she muttered to herself. And after this, she had to admit that the pills were starting to fail. Plus, her mind was growing more confused.

"Yes..? Maybe you've something to say…?" he asked slyly.

"Not really" she shot back immediately.

The situation was strange. Tifa had now realized that if she had moved from the desk, on which she was now practically sitting, she would have fallen to the ground, or something similar. So she stayed there, staring at him. And thinking about Aeris.  
_'But I'm _not _Aeris. I'm _different _from Aeris.'_

Sephiroth was staring back at her, his hand under his chin, a cocky and perplexed grin printed on his face.  
"Miss Lockhart, I understand it's not easy to get your eyes off me, but shouldn't you be doing something like…hm - _work_?"

Tifa smiled, hints of headache disturbing her. She had taken _tranquilizers_ so why was her blood _shooting _up her veins? She laughed for a moment, trying to convince herself she was theuntouchable goddess, and that Sephiroth was just nothing.  
_'He's _so not _doing me in this time.'  
_She giggled, hiding her face behind her bony hand, definitely catching Sephiroth's curiosity. Then she opened her mouth, and closed it again. He was still sitting on the sofa, his elbows on his knees clearly waiting for her to speak.

"Fuck you." she blurted out.

Sephiroth didn't move. For a second he widened his eyes a little more than usual, but it was almost _amusement_ that could be read on his face. He actually _chuckled_ after the brief still silence, while studying her shadowed figure, the sun setting beyond her.

"You find it funny? I can repeat it all the times you want. Fuck you. Want to hear it again?" Tifa couldn't get a hold of herself. She was smirking, almost laughing.  
'_The _pills. _Where the hell am I going?'_

"Lockhart… you are… _strange_ today." Sephiroth stood up, stretched his arms and peered at Tifa again. He was slowly but dangerously moving closer to the desk.

She was lost, experiencing total chaos in her mind. Nothing made sense. She was smiling, but her eyes were wide open in fear; her hand was fiercely set on her hip, all her muscles were tensed, but she felt her knees were weak.  
_'_That's _what he does to me.'  
_His presence was imposing, but she didn't want to resign.  
_'If only I could take another pill… just _another _one… maybe I would... would...'_

Cool down. _Was_ it possible?

She felt abruptly as if a knife had just stabbed her head, and she saw pitch black for the seconds which followed the sensation. As a result she tightened her grip on the desk, while her head was waving infirmly. She had nostability, either physical or mental. And Sephiroth was there.  
_'If I continue this way, I'm gonna lose this _again_.'  
_Like in the weapon room. Like _Aeris_.

She had been distracted for just a moment and he had already taken advantage of it.

He quickly grabbed her chin with his slender fingers, staring impassively at her shocked eyes, which were as crimson as the sky outside the glass wall.  
"You look drugged."

While her smile faded, her blood was rushing, to her head, to her face, everywhere, and she became so upset she couldn't breathe.  
"Stay _away_!"

She pushed him away with no fear of touching him, no more hesitations about it. The pills had succeeded in that at least. Though they were pathetically failing in all the rest. While her hands were touching his silky bath-robe, she lost her balance, and tried to step backwards to reach the desk again. She ended up moving to the right instead, and not finding any support she staggered helplessly. The room just _wouldn't _stay still.

She tried to soften her own fall dashing her hands toward the floor, but the second after, one of them was swiftly dragged back by something, her whole body following the sudden change of direction.  
Sephiroth was holding her by her upper arm, keeping her at a safe distance from himself like she was no more than a broken object.

"You _are _drugged." Sephiroth was smiling- smiling _wickedly_ - totally careless, maybe even a little bemused.

He pulled Tifa around a little, and _laughed_- of all things _- _while watching her black hair floating around. Her free hand moving spasmodically to grasp something secure and still.

He practically threw her on the black sofa, and she immediately brought both her hands to her face, a strange lament escaping her lips. _'  
Stop this… someone stop this…'  
_She could feel the black leather of the sofa under her fingers. But all was escaping.  
_'Four were _too many'

Sephiroth was now on the desk, his arms crossed on his chest, merely a shadow to her eyes.  
The sun had set, its last orange flame submerged in the sea.

"How old are you, Miss Lockhart?" he asked checking her position out, almost fascinated by her weakness. "Fifteen? Seventeen?" he smirked on purpose.

"I'm twenty" Tifa muttered almost immediately, her hand pressed on her forehead.  
The _tranquilizers_ were slowly destroying her, not Sephiroth. She had taken them not to collapse in front of him: they were bringing herself upon a platter to him, instead. All her barriers were being wrecked.  
_'He _won't _destroy me.' _

"Twenty..?" he mimicked her. Then he snorted "You're barely out of childhood."

She raised her head, her gaze meeting his.  
"You don't seem the old and wise type either, you know?" she retorted.  
_'He-_wont-_destroy-me.' _

He smiled and arched an eyebrow. "You care about my age?"

And she was so - so totally confused. Were the pills, the real problem? Or was Sephiroth, the real problem? Or maybe just this shitty life?

"I couldn't care less. Couldn't. Care. Less." she hissed, and covered her mouth with her hand. But what was amazing, was that she _did_ care. She wanted to know how old he was, _actually_.  
Nausea. Nausea again. _Terrible _nausea. She bent her head down rapidly, but she struggled so much that she managed not to throw up.

"You're drugged and _pregnant_, aren't you Lockhart?"

And that was a shot, literally, hitting her chest violently, her own body refusing the idea. She had strived relentlessly not to admit it with herself, and there it was, crude reality thrown there _mercilessly_ by that … that…by Sephiroth. By _him_.

"Shut the _hell _up!" she yelled, every effect of the pills completely disappeared. "Just shut up! I'm warning you… I'm…"

"Say, do you even _know _who's is the - _thing_?" he continued cruelly.

"I said _shut up_! It's not a thing! Not a _thing_, damn it! Damn _you_!" she gathered all her energy, and she actually managed to stand up, faltering towards him "_Shut up_!" Pure anger was overtaking her, and she had never been so far from being the untouchable goddess she wanted to be when she reached the desk.

On the other hand, _his _expression was unreadable. His usual emotionless face was sliding towards something different, but now Tifa was so upset she couldn't even look at him. While Tifa, crying out pointlessly, had started to punch the desk beside him with rage, he just examined her, perplexed. The woman's face was hidden from him by her black hair falling messily down to the desk.

"It- _it_! It is my husband's child! My _husband's_!" she was speaking in such a suffocated way it was almost difficult to understand her.

She wasn't looking at him while speaking: her pale arms, her fists tightened, were abandoned on the desk, her forehead almost touching it. But she could feel his presence, near, _too_ near for her. And she was so weak it was impossible not to think about _it_. About war - and _death_. About her husband, her son. About her destroyed hometown. And it was Sephiroth's fault. She blamed _him_, and none else.

"I want it _all_ back! I want my life back! Give me _Cloud_ back!" The pills had affected her so deeply she had lost control even of her words. "_You _killed him! You and _your_ army! He _died _to protect the town! He is a _fallen hero_!" She seethed raising her head a little. It looked like she was speaking to the desk, and not with Sephiroth.

He chuckled, giving immediately the chills to Tifa.  
"I see. A _fallen hero_. So…" he leaned slightly on her, his long silver hair touching her shoulder. "So he _left_ you alone to protect the town?" his words were highly provoking, and she froze for a moment, her fists hovering on the desk, a sensation of wetness on her shoulder.

"What do you mean? What are you insinuating? You have _no_ right to talk like that! No right at all! You know nothing! Shut up! Shut up! I loved him, and he _did _love me back - he was my dream. He _loved _me! _Shut up_!" Tifa pressed both her hand on her ears even if he was not speaking. "I don't want to listen! I don't want to _listen_!"

At this point, she had completely lost it. She felt mad, her brain confused, no inhibition of sort. They had spoken just a couple of times, and he already had reached the point. He had reached Cloud. '_Am I really sure that he loved me? _Really _sure?_'  
Cloud _was _strange, actually, and distant sometimes - unreachable. But he…  
'_He loved me!_ _It's just his _game _Tifa! Don't fall! Don't listen!_'

Suddenly, a hand reached her hair, grabbing it harshly, but strangely not hurting her, and pinned her right cheek against the desk.. Another hand removed quickly and dryly her black bangs from her forehead, revealing widened, blurred red eyes. He was _forcing_ her to look at him, bright emerald piercing her.

"Listen carefully, milady Lockhart," this was not a joke anymore. There was something stunningly serious in his voice. And there was something resembling _sympathy_ on his face. "Your husband liked to play the fallen hero and this is the result. And now, what are you going to do? Play the fallen _heroine_, too? Do you think it is smart, to drag the _being_ you have in your womb in this endless degradation? Do you think it's even _fair_? Or maybe you just don't care about it."

And with that, Tifa was broken. She couldn't cry at first. But her breath was like the cry of a wounded animal. And as soon as Sephiroth removed his hand from her hair and she could turn her head away form him, tears exploded out. So violently, so helplessly. And the second after, she was crying loud, like a small child, vainly trying to wipe away all the tears.

'_Like Aeris.'  
_It was like the presage of the morning had become true.  
_'One last pill… the last… if I can…'_

Tifa ran unsteadily toward the bathroom, her hands sometimes scratching the walls for support. When she reached it, she was utterly sick. Her head wouldn't stop spinning and her sight was seriously blurred with black stains dancing in the room. Despite that, she clearly recognized the glass container, full of the calling yellow pills. In the attempt to grasp it, she made several other bottles fall on the ground, pieces of glass scattered on the tiles.

'_He _can't _destroy me! I'm not like Aeris! I promise this will be the last one…'_

She hadn't even noticed he had arrived, that in no time Sephiroth snatched the container from her hand.  
He hastily looked disgusted at it before turning to Tifa.

"Tranquilizers? Is this the shit you've been taking? _Ridiculous_." Tifa tried to reach for the pills again, but he shoved her ruthlessly away. "If you really want to be _tranquil _in front of me, you should learn how to do that _without _external aids." he smirked, but it was not his usual smirk.

Was it just her - or was there actually something different in all that conversation? Was that _advice_?

Sephiroth resolutely smashed the glass container in the toilet, the noise of glass breaking throwing her in confusion even more.

'_NO!'_

"_No!"_ Tifa yelled, her tears not stopping, one hand covering her face the other one searching for support "You _won't _destroy me! I'm not Aeris! And you can't!" she moved tentatively towards the door, but direction didn't exist in that moment, and the black stains were growing wider. _'Did I really act like a fool? Am I really exposing my… _child _to danger? What if I have _killed it_? With those pills, without any food? What if I really killed _it_?'_

"Leave me _alone_! _Don't _destroy me!" her voice was terribly broken. Broken _already_, while she gestured with her hands as if she was trying to drive something away.  
She was giving her back to Sephiroth, but in the matter of fact, she had no idea of where she was.  
Everything was dashing everywhere when she lost her balance.

And surprisingly, he _actually _caught her. Her back collided with his chest, her knees not sustaining her anymore. Her head fell down, too, and she was now unwillingly burying her face in the silky damp fabric of his bath-robe's sleeve, while her hand clung on his knee, and the touch of his fingers on her bare arm terrified her.

"No, Miss Lockhart." his voice had never sounded so near. And it was deep, and cold, but _touching_. "I _wont _destroy you. I think _you _have destroyed yourself enough already."

Tifa probably would have liked to reply, to get angry, to stand on her own. But yes - she _was _destroyed.  
She hardly couldbreathe, and his scent was perturbing, addicting, alarming.

And when she passed out, she was entirely annihilated and opiated at the same time.

**End of Chapter 4**

**

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**

**Author'sNotes**: So hi everyone! Here's chapter 4... Eheh I hope you liked it… I'm trying my best with this story but one never knows… If you want to make me notice some typos or whatever, well that doesn't annoy me, I appreciate that instead! Then again, thank you to all the people who are supporting me and this story.. I hope this chapter didn't disappoint you. If you want to tell me what you liked about this, or what you didn't, you're welcome. Oh, and you can AIM me if you wish about whatever you want. It's TheSwampEye.

For now I have no will to leave the story unfinished, and if you still like it, I'll go on. See you with Chapter 5... (hopefully XP)

Swamp-Eyes


	5. Pathetic Excuses

**Subservience**

* * *

Chapter 5  
**Pathetic excuses**

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* * *

**

_My head is too sore and my heart's perforated  
Learning how to be alone and devastated.  
Where was my conscience?  
Where was my consciousness?  
_

_(A. DiFranco)__

* * *

_

When Tifa woke up, at first she couldn't realize where she was and _why _she was there. She opened her eyes, and tilted her head just a little. A groan escaped her lips almost automatically. She had the _Mother _of all the headaches. She reached her head with her hand, as to check she didn't have a knife planted in it. Obviously, she found nothing but her black hair. Other than that, she was ok. After the first few seconds both her mind and her sight grew more lucid, but _the _doubt was still there.

'_What the _hell _has happened?'_

There was a natural blue-ish light surrounding her, and leather under her tentative fingers. Trying to move her head as little as possible she peered around. Frowning, she noticed she was not in the room she shared with Jocelyn -  
_'Oh no_.'

She was on the sofa in the middle of the main living room. More precisely: she had been _sleeping _in the main living room, which she didn't even have the permission to _enter _if not to _clean _it.

'_They're gonna kill me'_

Was that just her impression, or was she a little more - _less confused _than usual? She felt like her senses were working better than they had worked for a while. She perceived things more quickly, and she didn't have to wait _minutes _before formulating a rational thought.

Finally, she made up her mind and, clinging to the black leather of the sofa cushions, tried to get up in a sitting position. She repented her courage the very second after, when a killer pain stabbed her head.

'_Christ_!' Instantly she pressed her hands against her temples, to keep her head firm, and the ache began fading away with torturing slowness.

When she tried to recollect the previous events, she realised she was far more blank minded that she should have been. It was like - she had been in a _black tunnel_ for at least a week. And now, she felt a completely different woman.

She was quiet.

No knots tightening her stomach, no tensed muscles, no suspicious eyes. Just her, sitting on the black sofa, _quietly_. Surely time had passed since the last time she had felt that way.  
'_A _very_ peculiar awakening.'_

Tifa rested her head back on the sofa cushion, and let her legs fall down the edge of it. Taking deep breaths, she drew her gaze away from her own body, disgusted by her excessive thinness.  
'_How come I reached this point?'_

When she lifted her eyes, and they met the huge glass wall, fragments of memories started hitting her mind like bullets.

She remembered bright yellow pills. _Many _bright yellow pills. She remembered the tears of a girl in _pain_, pills again, a crimson sunset. Something, something deep inside her which had exploded. Pieces of herself scattered on the tiles.

She remembered _Sephiroth_.  
Him, omnipresent, standing stubbornly above all the rest, with his irking sarcasm, his cool smirk.

The sight of the night outside the glass wall was breathtaking. The sky was full of stars. But she was thinking about _Sephiroth_. She frowned.  
'_What is my damned problem?' _

Beside, there was something different in thinking about Sephiroth _now_. Little by little, pieces of the terrible hours she had passed were coming back to her mind. In the silence of the room she could only hear her breathe. She was alone. Or was she-?  
Instinctively, she touched her abdomen; black locks fell on her sad profile, her lips parting slowly.

"I'm so sorry…"

That was a whisper in the night. A whisper which was directed to the creature who, for the first time, she was able to _accept_. That was a welcome. Maybe, she had indirectly been trying to kill _it_, by denying its existence. But now… she could no more act that way.  
'_I'm a mother.'_

_°°Do you think it's even _fair_? Or maybe you just don't care about it.°°  
_The sentence blew her mind, emerging from the blurred memories of the past day. All the people in the world, and it had to be _Sephiroth_, the one _redeeming _her? Wasn't _he - _the one who needed redemption?  
He had _broken _her, after all.  
'_Maybe I just _needed_ to be broken. I needed to be broken to return like I was before all this shit.'_

Many pieces were still missing… but she was there, and she was not intoxicated by any pill.  
Then, something on the black coffee-table at the side of the sofa caught her attention. A slender glass with a sparkling transparent spectral-like liquid in it, which was almost glowing in the dark. Feeling weird, Tifa looked elsewhere, as if that glass could actually be destined to someone else. But the room _was _deserted, and she _had _been sleeping there alone after all.

Suspicion was still depicted on her face when she touched the glass. Lifting it, she noticed a folded piece of paper under it.

'_Now what's this supposed to mean?' _She stared at the squared white spot on the table, still frozen with the glass in her hand, a sort of panic immobilizing her. '_Oh - to the hell with it_'

Tifa reached for the note, and unfolded it nervously.

A few sharp, ordinate - but not that comprehensible - black words on it. She already _knew _who had written that even before wondering who could have been. And shefelt - she didn't know _how _she felt. All she could do in that moment was looking at those jet-black signs without catching their meaning. And the darkness didn't help, for sure.

Biting her lip, she folded the note again, not to see those words, even trying to be as accurate as _who _had placed the note there. Because, needless to say, the note had been folded with clinical precision, its edges perfectly fitting together.

But she felt stupid the very second after, and unfolded it spasmodically again, as if its content could have disappeared meanwhile. Not very surprisingly, the words were still there. She turned slightly, so that the pale moonbeams from the glass wall could enlighten the piece of paper. And trying to remain as quiet as possible, she read those two lines.

_Drink this when you wake up, my dear destroyed lady. And - just to placate your curiosity - I'm 27. _

She went through the whole thing at least five times, but that was that. Even trough the _damn _paper his sarcasm hit her, making her widen her eyes and arch her eyebrow in confusion. And making her _blush _- of all things. Was that a joke? Did _Sephiroth _actually take a pen and _write _that - for _her_? Because _she _was the one supposed to read it, and none else. Did _Sephiroth _pour that liquid - which, honestly, looked like one of the most expensive medicines one could find - in that glass, or did he just order a maid to do so? Not to mention the _age _thing.

That all sounded incredible. And terribly _flattering_.

To scratch away the annoying thought, Tifa took the glass, and downed the chill liquid in a few gulps. She didn't know what that medicine could be for, but surely it couldn't hurt more than everything else had already. The bitter taste lingered for a moment in her throat while she re-placed the glass not so delicately on the coffee table.

But that stupid note was still in her hand.

She stood up resolutely, looking at the note with a sort of anger. In a few paces she reached the void trashcan - well, she had voided it the day before, actually - hovering the piece of paper over it, as if she was menacing a conscious being. Unwillingly, she _had _to read it again. And again.

Other unrequited memories came to her. _Destroyed lady_. She remembered she had passed out. And _where _she had passed out.

'_Damn _Sephiroth'

She snorted, lowered her head, closed her eyes and suspended the piece of paper over the trashcan another time. But not by any chance would her fingers _drop _it.  
She covered her eyes with her free hand.

That was not going to be as easy as she had hoped.

---

As she stared at the tea cups set in Wutainese porcelain she was holding not so firmly in her hands, Tifa came to the conclusion someone in Heaven actually _had _to hate her.

No, wait, maybe things were simpler: that stupid housemaid _Nicolle _hated her. She was always around spitting orders like a dictator - maybe not even Sephiroth could give so many orders; in ten seconds she had arranged the whole day for the entire bunch of housemaids, and she had made sure Tifa had to do more work than all the other maids together.

Nicolle often looked at her with that wicked smile; she was smarter and bitchier than a servant should be. She probably had noticed her incompatibly with Sephiroth, so she was practically throwing her against him all the time, even making it sound like she was doing her a _favour_.

"Go. You have to serve the tea to the General and his friend in the east living room, _now_, Tiffa. And _don't _make that face. There are many people who would like to be in your place." she snapped and then snorted, as if she was talking with a retarded child.

"It's _Tifa_. And if people want to be in my place, I'll be _more_ than willing to be replaced." Tifa tried to push tea-set towards her, but she noticed every inches she moved that fast, the tea overflowed the tea pot slightly.

"For Lord's sake, Tiffa! Be more careful!" Nicolle held for a second her own hands on the salver, incinerating Tifa with her dark eyes. "..and stop being so causeless rebellious!"

Only God knew the urge Tifa had to smack that maid _hard_. But at that point, she preferred to avoid trouble, because they seemed to be following her anyway.  
'_But she's _so _going to be smacked now or then..'_

"And now hurry! Don't make the General wait. And don't waste your time, too. You have tons of work to do today…" Nicolle smiled sadistically at her last line, and then started pushing Tifa towards the door "And - _please _- prove that you're not totally incapable, and serve the tea _properly_"

As soon as Nicolle looked elsewhere, Tifa rolled her eyes. But, eventually, she tried to remember _which one _the east living room was. And, last but not least, tried to get concentrated enough to see Sephiroth again after the _catastrophe _of the evening before.

---

The first thing she thought when she was about to enter the now infamous east living room, was that probably it couldn't be the right room. Stunningly, a limpid laugh came from inside, and it even lasted a few seconds. Could actually someone be laughing like that - in such an hearty way - in _Sephiroth's _presence? Tifa shook her head, and decided to enter anyway.

Just to keep doubts away from her, the very moment she lifted her gaze from the tea cup set, she saw Sephiroth. He was sitting on an armchair, his boots on the coffee table in front of him and his chin resting on his hand. She couldn't be watcher without being watched for more than a few seconds: Sephiroth shot her a glare and a smirk almost immediately.

'_Damn him'_

Tifa, pretending to be now deeply interested in the tea-pot, walked in the room. But even if she could avoid to look at him, she couldn't just become deaf all of a sudden.

"Good day, _Miss Lockhart_. Did you sleep well?" pure sarcasm was what characterised his voice in that moment. He removed his boots from the coffee table to allow her to put the salver down.

Tifa bent down, her black hair falling down as usual, and she let the whole tea set almost drop on the little table, the metallic spoons clinging against the porcelain. "Here's the tea." she hissed, nearly biting her own lips, pouring the tea from the teapot in the two cups as fast as she could "And - _just to placate your curiosity _- I slept _wonderfully_." Just an instant, _she _was the one searching for eye contact. It was a challenge, red piercing emerald - or maybe it was vice versa.

No, she was _not _nervous. She was…

"I am amazed, _Seph_! Since when are you calling your servants '_Miss'_?" a vibrant and joking voice remembered her that they were not alone in the room.

Tifa, caught slightly off guard, turned quickly to the guy who had just spoken. He was sitting on the sofa in front of the armchair, one of his boots careless leaning on it, and he seemed as comfortable and spontaneous as he was at his own home. He looked like he was his earl twenties. His hair was a mess of black rebel spikes, and his eyes deep purplish-blue, bright and smart. He was examining her attentively, and she even felt a little embarrassed when she noticed his eyes were scanning her from herfeet to the tips of her hair. When his eyes met hers again, he winked.

And that _actually _caught her off guard.

Trying to hide her amazement, Tifa turned to Sephiroth, who was now smirking knowingly, his gaze dancing from Tifa to the other guy as he suppressed a chuckle.  
After a few electric moments of mixed exchanged looks, Sephiroth extended his arm towards the guy.

"Miss Lockhart, let me introduce you Zachary Donovan, Aeris' cousin, not to mention my lieutenant."

Zack smiled, gesturing with his hand.  
"Nah. Let's leave the army by itself now that it's all over" there were hints of nostalgia in his voice, and she could have sworn his cheerful expression shadowed for a moment. But eventually, he smiled to her again. "By the way, you can call me _Zack_ - wait, no. You _should _call me Zack, please. And you are…?" Zack offered his hand to her. And without knowing why, Tifa felt trapped.

"And she is.." Sephiroth sharp voice largely prevented her from shaking Zack's hand "..one of _my _servants. Caught the hint, Zachary? _Servants_. Tifa Lockhart, quite an interesting girl, actually. She has a thing for cutting, anorexia, overdoses… you know, stuff like that." he explained with a bastard smile.

Zack arched his eyebrow, than burst out into laughter.  
"You're not serious, are you?" clearly, he didn't believe a single word Sephiroth had said. He looked at Tifa to search confirmation, but she was too busy in staring at Sephiroth.

She could not speak there, but in the matter of facts, she had _tons _of things to tell him. Even if it was hard to admit, something _had _changed between them the night before. Even though, if she tried to pull together a sentence, she just went blank-minded.  
All she could do in that moment was to beg him just with her _eyes _not to humiliate her - especially in front of that stranger - by mentioning things, by the way, she was trying to forget.

Surprisingly, Sephiroth seemed to read her blatant look; he bit his lips to contain something sarcastic he was probably going to add. Then, a smirk appeared on his face again, and he bowed slightly his head, communicating something like _'As you wish, madam'_

Now it was Zack's turn to glance at Seph and his…_servant_. He tried to interpret their mute dialogue, but the result was a perplexed expression on his handsome face, his mouth ajar, a little frown; the overall impression one could gather was that he definitely believed he had missed something.

"I see.. Very _very _interesting, Seph. So what's going on there?" with a swift movement, Zack flung himself on the armrest of Sephiroth's chair, and circled his neck with his arm, grinning like mad.

Tifa was shocked by that sight. Someone could actually treat the Great Sephiroth _that _way? Teasing him and hugging him without being slashed by his Masamune the very second after? It was incredible that Zack seemed completely untouched by Sephiroth's freezing aura. She found herself _envying _him for a few seconds, and then just scratched the thought.

Sephiroth snorted and removed Zack's arm from his shoulders.

"Oh. _Lots _of things are going on… but you'd better just not to know them." he ironized, and looked at Tifa with an intriguing grin. She responded him with something which was very near to an angry grimace.

Zack laughed and patted Sephiroth's head, stopping wisely in the moment in which he knew, having he continued with that just another second, Seph would have smacked him to the ground.  
"Well I hope you're not cheating on my dear cousin, anyway… you know, Tifa, he's such a bastard with women. I recommend you not to get too close to him…"

A laughing Zack was pushed away from Sephiroth's armrest.

"Shut your damn mouth." he hissed.

There had been something about that sentence that had _actually _unnerved him. Just a few were able to upset him with only the use of words, and Zack, with his totally carefree attitude, was one of those. Undoubtedly, another person who had raised trough his annoyers' ranks was Tifa Lockhart herself. She seemed dangerous, sometimes, even if until that moment he had managed to defeat her all the way.  
'_She has something different and terribly provoking in her eyes today...'  
_As he noticed the subtle smile on her lips, surely caused by Zack's words, and the strange complicity between the two - or maybe he was just _imagining _it - Sephiroth felt kind of annoyed with the situation. And Zack's words were still bothering him.  
'_I hate it when he mentions _Aeris_.'_

"I suppose I'll be going…" Tifa said, her gaze locked to the ground.

Immediately Zack recovered from the laughter, while Sephiroth didn't even look at her.  
"No, please, Tifa!" Zack pulled briefly one of her black locks while returning to the sofa, to then practically let himself fall back on it, "Why don't you stay here and chat with us?" he patted his hand on the sofa beside him.

Sephiroth kicked the coffee table abruptly, making the whole tea-set tremble and cling.  
"Would you please stop _hitting _on my servants, Zachary?" they both knew Sephiroth used his complete name only when he was angry, or was _pretending _to be angry. "That's pretty deplorable, you bestowing your graces upon a _pathetic excuse _for a woman."

Zack widened his eyes in bewilderment, his smile still frozen on his lips.  
"Hell, Seph, you really _are _bastard, you know." Zack took the most convenient pillow of the sofa and threw it to Sephiroth, who just halted it before it hit his face. Then he turned to Tifa, a sincere smile re-appearing on his face "Tifa, don't listen to him, you're wonderful"

It was difficult to state if he was joking or if he was serious. Most likely, he was just being sincere and not even considering the consequences of his words. Nonetheless, Tifa couldn't help but feeling a complete idiot. And she probably _did _look like an idiot, since she hardly had spoken through the whole meeting. At this point, she didn't know which one of the two men was the most difficult one to look at.  
'_This is awkward'_

And still, there was something about Zack that warmed her up. His brightness, his smile, she didn't know. In the same way she had done with Aeris, she wondered how he could be so close to Sephiroth.

Resolutely, she turned on her heels.  
"I'll be go-"

"Wait, _Lockhart_."

Sephiroth's voice stopped her helplessly, as if an invisible string had latched to her neck, preventing her from moving.

"You need something?" she had tried hard to make her voice sound quiet, not to wake extra suspicions in Zack; still, it had come out a menacing mutter.

"Yes," he answered, leaning back against the armchair. "You haven't sugared my tea."

Tifa couldn't just believe her ears. An hysterical smile appeared on her face almost automatically while she turned to face him. That _had _to be a joke. Either that or a _pathetic excuse_ to annoy her pointlessly.  
'_And it wouldn't be the first time indeed.'_

Completely forgetting about Zack, a hand on her hip, Tifa rolled her eyes.  
"Well, you're old enough to do that by yourself, don't you think so?" she snapped nervously.

Zack covered his mouth with his hand in order to suffocate a chuckle, fearing a reaction from his friend.

Sephiroth, instead, looked like he was having fun. Fun for his standards, of course.  
"Actually - _no_, Miss Lockhart. I don't think so." he looked briefly at his nails, and then at Tifa again. Even when he was asking an utterly idiotic thing, and when he was _literally _lower than her, he managed to look _that _superior, as if he was a king examining a stain of caked dirt.  
Oh, _the way _that got under her skin.

Tifa clenched her teeth, and approached the coffee table _extremely _unwillingly. Again, she bent down, violently plunging the little spoon in the sugar-bowl.  
"How many?" she hissed, trying to remain detached from the fact that Sephiroth was probably staring at her from a not so long distance. Her question sounded like a death-threaten. Meanwhile, the spoon filled with sugar was hovering above Sephiroth's tea cup.

While she was still concentrating on the sugar, Sephiroth fingers reached for her black bangs, removing them from her eyes. His knuckles touched barely her forehead, in an almost casual way.  
"You should cut this fringe. It's always in the way."

Every time their gazes met, it was a different match. But when he caught her off guard, she eventually lost it. Her crimson orbs looked like fishes out of water when they lacked the protection of her hair.  
She involuntary dropped the spoon in the cup, and observed the sugar sparkling briefly in the orange liquid.  
'_Why doesn't he remove that _slimy _hand of his?_'  
That felt like… he was _sneaking _in her boundaries. And it still felt _wrong_. And annoying. And-

Sephiroth looked down at the tea, too, but the moment after his eyes caught Tifa's again.  
"That sugar was _too much_. Now the tea will be sickeningly sweet."

Tifa slapped hastily his hand away.  
"You know what? I'm sure it won't hurt." she sneered, stepping back and trying to stand up again.

"I'm not done yet."

But this time, they were not invisible strings pulling her back. It was Sephiroth himself, catching a lock of her hair.

Why, of all things, her _hair_. He seemed obsessed with it. As if… he found too _disgusting _to touch her directly. Completely unrequited, the image of Sephiroth catching her back then in that bathroom came to her mind. And surely it didn't help right in that situation, where she even had to lean - as imperceptibly as _possible _- her hand on his shoulder for a fragment of second in order not to stumble upon him. She then withdrew it, holding it to her heart as if it was a treasure.

They were so close now that she thought that couldn't be real. His silver hair were _there, _her cheekbone most likely _had _brushed against his. And now his neck. Inches - _inches _- from her lips.

The only positive note was that Sephiroth wasn't holding her lock anymore. But that wasn't _so _positive, after all. Because she wasn't moving from that position either way.

"Since you don't want me to talk about that in - _public_, I'll have to ask this in private." he was whispering into her ear. "I am a gentleman , believe it or not."  
Tifa didn't reply. Not that he had expected her to do so. He knew she was probably too shocked to do something. Not many people could tolerate his closeness. And that woman didn't tolerate it _at all_. He had to admit it: sometimes he used that weapon on purpose. To scare her. To keep her at her place. Tifa's light breathe on his neck reminded him what he was supposed to do, except enjoying the woman's uneasiness.  
"So, how _many _did you take yesterday?" he finally asked, always in an incredibly low voice.

Tifa jerked back just a little. Enough for their eyes to meet again. And this time, due to the excessive closeness, was more - _drastic _that the other ones. She _was not _looking at Sephiroth - she was momentarily lost in his eyes. For the very first time she had noticed they were not completely green; they had several aqua specks in it.  
Though more coldly, also Sephiroth had been studying _her _eyes in those moments, and discovered their actual colour was a warm chocolate brown, but that they fooled the observer with their bright red stains which stood out '_Not _that _crimson, after all.'_

When they both recovered from the - moment, Tifa leaned in again. Her temple brushed against his. She didn't _know _if she had done that on purpose, and probably didn't even _want _to know.  
"What are you talking about?" she managed to mutter.

"Don't act dumb. How many _tranquilizers _did you take? I've been wondering about it for a while, you know" There actually _was _curiosity in his voice.

Tifa chuckled briefly at the question. That was such a… futile question.  
"Try to guess" she smirked while studying a nerve running on Sephiroth's neck.

Silence for a moment. And they were still leaning towards each other, completely pointlessly. Zack was observing them amused like never before.

"Three" Sephiroth shot.

Tifa's ironic giggle followed almost immediately.  
"Fail"

Silence again. Then Sephiroth's sharp hiss.  
"You _didn't _take more than three. I hope."

Tifa inspired, and then began murmuring right in his ear.  
"Four, actually. Plus one in the morning, it makes _five _I think."

She actually _felt _him freezing in that moment.

Immediately after, he was laughing lightly - surely one of the most sincere laughs she had ever heard from him. He even leaned his forehead on her shoulder for a moment, before moving backwards and leaning properly back on the armchair again.  
"You're _completely _and _utterly _insane, Lockhart." he spelled clearly, taking the cup of tea in his hand.

"The sane one talked" she snapped sarcastically while he sipped the tea. "So, you _pathetic excuse _for a man, is the damn tea _too _sweet?"

He smiled without looking at her.  
"Sweet enough. And now go back to work, you _pathetic excuse_ for a woman, before my friend here jumps on you." he dismissed her trying to sound ad harsh as possible.

Zack laughed loudly, and waved at Tifa.  
"Ehy, Tifa. I hope to see you soon. I'll be here for the party, that's for sure. And you _will _dance with me, I bet you."

Sephiroth looked at him and shook his head with a half disgusted expression.  
"I thought we went through this already, Zack" he smirked. "_Lockhart_!" he called her, who was on the threshold already. His voice was cutting now, apparently with no reason at all. She didn't turn back to him, and that _was _irritating. But he decided to continue anyway. "Are you - that's… ah - are you _okay_, now?"  
While looking nervously at the now absolutely still woman, Sephiroth's eyes widened a little.

'_Have I - possibly - just _choked_?'_

In that moment, Tifa was grateful to all the Gods that she hadn't the salver in her hands anymore - because, in that case, she surely would have dropped it. She was _not _going to turn to him, because she _knew _the most stupid expression ever was printed on her face. The first time she tried to reply, she just gaped, and thanked none could see her. The second time she managed to blurt out something.

"Yes. I'm okay." an _eternal _pause of silence followed. Than, the fatal words slid out her lips "Thank you.".

After having said that, she disappeared instantly.

As soon as Tifa left the room, Zack, who had been trying to extrapolate something from Sephiroth's blank expression, couldn't contain himself.  
"Damn it, Seph! Is it just me, or _was _that sexual tension?"

Sephiroth took impassibly another sip of tea, and then rolled his eyes.  
"Oh, yes. _Lots _of sexual tension." his usual sarcasm was surging from his voice. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Zack, but fucking _skeletons _doesn't happen to be one of my favourite pastimes…"

Zack laughed, shaking his head. Then he turned back to look at the door from where Tifa had gone away. Smiling, he leaned back on the sofa.  
"Well Seph, if _that _was a pathetic excuse for a woman…" he whistled significantly. "You think you can arrange me a date with her?"

"Shut your damn mouth, Zachary."

* * *

_Well - yes. Maybe she _had _exaggerated this time. She was lying on the sofa of her living room, staring at the ceiling and at the spinning chandelier. _

_She _knew _she and Cloud were _supposed _to be just childhood friends and blah blah… but _hell_. If that was that, so _why _seeing him with that girl had been such a pang in her heart? She was not sure they were together… still - ah, who was she trying to fool. A boy and a girl walking alone in that deserted town at late night couldn't _possibly _be just friends. _

'I'm so stupid' _she hadn't slept all night for the agitation, so she had been taking random pills from her mother's locker in the previous hours, to try and forget about it all. As a result, she had collapsed on the sofa after a while, and now she couldn't even go to her daily training with Zangan. '_And he's going to kill me'

_Suddenly, the door of her house burst open, but she was unable to turn and face the newcomer. _

"_Teef!" a very apprehensive Cloud ran to the sofa, almost yelling at her "Where _were _you? You disappeared yesterday evening, and didn't come to practice this morning!" then, his voice softened a bit "I was starting to get worried"_

"_Hi, Cloud." she blurted out with terrible voice, and the image of him with the blond girl stuck in her brain. _

"_What the hell happened to you? You look terrible" Cloud touched her forehead "I don't think you have a temperature…" _

"_Mh - nothing. I woke up, and I was not feeling well. That's all." she lied, sad eyes looking at Cloud's. "Cloud… I…"_

_But now he was too preoccupied to listen to her.  
_"_Why don't you go to bed? It's damn cold in this room."_

_She sighed.  
_"_I know. I - I" Tifa blushed heavily "I'm afraid I can't stand up." she said turning her gaze away from him, who, by the way, was spinning with the rest of the room. _

_Cloud snorted and shook his head, leaning on Tifa, his golden bangs falling on her cheeks.  
_"_I can't leave you alone even for a single moment…" he teased her, smiling "Come, I'll carry you to your bed."_

_The second after, her arm was latched around his neck, her face buried under his chin, her lips more or less casually touching his skin, while his hand was set firmly on her back._

'Is it possible that he _still _hasn't _noticed_?'

_There, in Cloud's arms, she didn't even mind dying. _

End of Chapter 5

* * *

**Author'sNotes**: Mmmmh not even in the mood for notes. It's been so long, and my beta has disappeared, so I'm forced to publish this without external check - and it probably sucks. But the wait was going to be eternal, so guys, if you wanted the chapter, thiswas the only way you could have it - unless someone checks this for me and I edit it. Lol. I'm really sorry. Really.  
Sooo - next chapter's the party.. have any suggestions? P ahah I've planned it quite well but one never knows..  
That's all.. please if you have read, drop a line, about the story - orwhatever you want, I'm so depressed these days. I need comfort.. 

Swamp-Eyes


	6. Fucking Cinderella

**Subservience**

* * *

**Chapter 6  
****Fucking Cinderella.**

_A blackened shroud, a hand-me-down gown  
Of rags and silks, a costume  
Fit for one who sits and cries  
For all tomorrow's parties_

_(The Velvet Underground)_

_

* * *

_

-,-'-,-1.45PM-,-'-,-

Sephiroth was sitting at his desk with an annoyed expression on his face, slender fingers lingering on the scattered paper sheets, and his trained ears constantly disturbed by the noises in the palace. There was no peace, at that moment, and working had become impossible. Why, why did people have to be so shallow to get so excited over such a minor thing?

'_Hell with the party and hell with the one who had the idea to throw it.'_

"Ahem."

The most disturbing thing was the man sitting before him, who -all morning long- had done nothing but bother him with nonsensical and utterly _inane _questions. Jade eyes scrutinized the young man for what had to be the nth time. He had a pencil tucked behind one ear, and his wide brown eyes were staring blankly at the piece of paper in his hand – he had remained pretty much oblivious to the angry glare the silver haired gentleman was shooting him. God, he was stupid. He _had _to be, after all, Sephiroth could read it on his face, and he wondered how it was possible that a respectable person such as himself had to see and deal with such dim-witted beings around him.

"_Yes_? What do you need now?" the General shot him a cold glance, trying to be as detached as possible from the party thing. He was _already _hating that celebration. "It's not like I'm insinuating that this evening's party it's not an important issue - but I have tons of papers to tend to, and I'm sure _Miss Aeris _would be more than willing to answer to your quest-"

"General, Sir! This one _requires _your approval!" the black haired man cut him off, and began tapping the pencil on the piece of paper. "We need more waitresses for the buffet in the ball room.. And I'm evaluating a few options - I'd dare say Jocelyne is not an appropriate choice.. That woman is so emotive.. She would just mess all the things up.. And we need a decent looking one.. what about that Tifa Lockhart?"

Sephiroth, who at that moment had started to fill the papers in an honest attempt to ignore the man, lifted his eyes at the mere mention of that name. He had heard _nothing _from the other man's entire monologue- he couldn't care less about the party, nor anything about what he was saying - but that _name_. That name only, much to his displeasure, apparently had the power to make his work become unimportant.

"What?" The question slipped past his control and out his thin lips. And he regretted it like hell the very second after.

"Tifa Lockhart, Sir. You know, the brunette. The new-"

"I _know_." Sephiroth cut him off far more briskly than necessary. _'I know even too well'_

"Perfect then! She will be serving in the ballroom. She's the most appropriate maidservant.." the man appeared completely satisfied with his decision, and started writing quickly on his piece of paper.

"Wait a minute." Sephiroth had now completely forgotten about the paperwork; one hand hovered in mid air with the pen and emerald sharp eyes lit up in attention. Things were getting too difficult to handle. Scratch that. They were _not _difficult to handle, really. But he just _could not _get over the fact that - momentarily caught by the thought of that _bothersome _Lockhart - he had missed the meaning of what the man was saying _again_. It… _worried_ him.. "Tifa Lockhart _what_?"

The man looked at Sephiroth with a barely concealed grimace, unsure if the General really _wanted _him to say it for the third time; the General was notorious for his short patience. But then he carefully gave in to the man's order, almost waving the piece of paper inches from Sephiroth nose.

"Tifa Lockhart.. We'll make her serve cocktails and food in the ballroom. This evening. Lockhart - ballroom?" He paused for effect. "Is that okay?"

This time, the man's message successfully reached Sephiroth's brain. A hollow laugh escaped his lips, and he arched his eyebrow perplexed.

"_Lockhart?- _in the _ball _room? You surely are not serious. She is quite hideous and skeletal, that people would not want to eat anything, with her in sight. That is an absolutely horrendous idea." he told the man, his lips curled in what was supposed to be a disgusted expression. But it was _different _- all was so irritatingly different.

_°°Thank you°° _Damn words she had pronounced - damn words _he _had pronounced. Tifa Lockhart was bothering him, now. And the last thing he needed was so see her figure wandering in the ballroom that evening.

"Forget that" his tone admitted no contradictions. "She's _not _serving in the ballroom."

'_What are you stupidly trying to do? Keep her hidden? Keep her _far away_? From when the hell a _servant _can become a _problem_'_

"But General - Sir.. I think that if we made her dress properly she would in actuality look a lot bette-"

Sephiroth nervously snatched the piece of paper from the man's hand, placed it on the desk, and crossed out the name 'Tifa Lockhart' on the end of the 'Ball room' list. That was pretty satisfactory.

"Listen carefully. We're _not _playing any fucking _Cinderella _here."

And this time, the man didn't dare to reply.

---

-,-'-,-9.13PM-,-'-,-

Cocktail parties - _upper classes _cocktail parties especially- Tifa had always harboured a strange love-hate sentiment towards them. They were the typical things one despised for their futility, but secretly dreamed to attend, at least once.

'_Surely not in these terms, for Lord's sake.'_

Maybe she _had _dreamed about going to a cocktail party - just maybe. But being a _waitress _at a cocktail party, well that had always been far beyond her imagination. Too bad it was cruel reality in that moment. All she had to do was running in the corridors, carrying void dishes and glasses.

'_Stupid rich men. Stupid, _stupid _rich men.__' _

The party had begun more or less one hour ago, when the sun was setting on the sea of the North Continent. There were hundreds of people already in the palace, drinking and talking about nothing, but it was clear that the ShinRa _jet set_ still had to arrive. Famous people were strange - you could _see _they were famous even if you had actually never heard about them. They were so full of themselves.

Tifa could _see _the ballroom from the arcade in the corridor she had to run in. And she could _hear _that stupid lounge jazz playing. But she was _not _attending that party. She was just a waitress - and she was disturbed by it - _too _disturbed.

---

-,-'-,-10.03PM-,-'-,-

Scanning the ballroom - while dashing with dirty dishes - had officially become her distraction, this evening. Then, a familiar dark-haired man made his entrance in the ballroom, escorted by a butler. _Zack_. He was smiling as usual, Tifa noticed, and he had a black haired girl with him. The latter could barely contain her enthusiasm, evident on her face; her eyes were wide open in joy, while she looked around, pointing out the luxury of the room, and clinging to his arm. Zack laughed, stroked her head and then kissed her quickly.

Tifa smiled at the sight of Zack and this girl, when yet another pretty lady came to him, with a smile and a hug. The black haired girl looked away for a second, trying to adjust her green dress, while the other one forced a drink in Zack's hand, and they toasted to something. The second after, Zack had downed his first – and obviously _not_ his last - drink of the evening.

'_So he's a womaniser'_

That thought was far from being surprising.

"_Tiffa_! Hurry up! You think you are here to be _a watcher_ this evening?" Nicolle barked at her. Tifa had never seen that girl looking so beautiful. Her black hair were shiny this evening, and her dress was not that far from the ones the rich women were wearing down in ballroom. She was serving there; Tifa had seen her crawling elegantly among the people, carrying the salver high above her head. She could tell very many bad things about Nicolle - but the girl was _not _incapable at all. And the more she was beautiful, the more Nicolle was irritating, she realized.

'_She thinks she's playing the fucking Cinderella..' _Tifa mentally cursed, a sort of aching envy blossoming in her chest. She was _very _disturbed - and there was no turning back. It was like - seeing something, without having the possibility to catch it. It was like _wasting _time. Those damn porcelain dishes, those empty glasses she had to carry - they were the _rubbish _of what she could not get.

'_What you see is what you get. How untrue.'_

And the way they hadmade her dress - even if she was not really supposed to appear where most of the people were - she didn't like it. It was not bad, objectively. But it was unnatural. She was so used to wearing _rags_ that even a _decent _uniform made her feel strange. And her hair. What had become a black wavy mess in the past weeks was now coiled in an ordinate high ponytail, which reminded her - _painfully _- about her past. Ponytail meant training - it meant running up the Mt Nibel until she was breathless - it meant punching the air, cracking wood panels. It meant _Cloud _pulling her hair - Cloud laughing, and Cloud -

Two figures walking side by side in the corridor distracted her - and when she lifted her gaze, she nearly dropped the tray she was carrying.

Sephiroth and Aeris.

If it was possible, Sephiroth looked even more annoyed than Tifa herself. His lips were sharper than usual, his eyes narrowed – but… He was just perfect. Not a single part in his whole figure was out of place - he was _so _- stunning. He was wearing what looked like a ShinRa official uniform, with at least ten medals attached on it, gold on black. He appeared serious… and seriously _bored, _his face easily giving away something like 'Let's go and end this as soon as possible'

On his black sleeve, a pale hand. Pale, and fragile looking. Was she really _touching _him, or was her hand _suspended _just above his arm? It was not easy to understand. Aeris. Why had she always to keep her head so low - _why_? She was stunningly beautiful - she was almost perfect, just like him. She was the embodiment of the word beauty - so _why _did she have to hide her face behind those loose wavy locks? At that time, she appeared to be deep in thought and Tifa could not help but wonder: what was occupying her mind in that moment?

In that short span of time that she had been observing the couple, Tifa realized that just like the general himself, Aeris clearly didn't want to show up in the ballroom - and that touch on Sephiroth's arm - that was an ignored cry for help. True, they were beautiful, they were close to perfection but together… The two of them – they are the _worst _– no, not worst, just one of saddest couples Tifa had ever seen.

When they went past Tifa, Sephiroth's eyes had not even settled on her, barely noticing there was someone there. They _went past _her, as if she was _invisible _- ah, the _rage _that gesture aroused in her. What was the problem? So, no stupid jokes - 'ah, _Lockhart_, what a _pleasure _to see you'. No sarcastic grins, no disgusted faces - no _nothing_. And so _where _was the damn problem? Was she _craving _for his attention?

'_This would be.. So desperately pathetic'_

Sephiroth pulled Aeris just a little closer, preventing her from stumbling or crossing paths with Tifa - his long fingers leaned for a second on her exposed shoulder - so _lightly _- was _he _actually touching her now? There _was _something in that touch; perhaps, there was _care_, maybe even kindness. But… what was wrong with them? Tifa was examining every second of it. Something bothered her - she didn't know what. She was feeling bad, that was all.

Distractively, she saw her own reflection in the silver platter. It was so strange - surely it had to be for the hair - her pretty nose in view, her lips so highlighted by the thinness of her face. Undoubtedly, she looked different from usual. Where she used to see a mess of black locks hiding her features, there was her face now. And - actually - she had not seen her face in a while.

Suddenly, realisation struck her.

'_He has not even recognised me.'_

---

-,-'-,-10.58PM-,-'-,-

"So, we all believe that - _monster _in the Corel desert could cause us some problems." a thin man, with long black hair and sunken-in cheeks was speaking, while sipping slowly a glass of wine.

In those two sofas, currently sitting were the fulcrum of ShinRa. Professor Hojo, Professor Gast and his wife, Sephiroth and Aeris themselves, a fat man named Heidegger, and the head of ShinRa, the President.

"Professor Hojo. I reckon that referring to an ancient Weapon with the word 'monster' is _inappropriate _use of language." Gast, who was usually an accomplishing man, seemed pretty much irritated every time Hojo was around. His wife Ifalna, who was as beautiful as her daughter Aeris, silently placed her hand on her husband's arm.

"Dear, _dear _Gast. Don't get _that _upset." Hojo smirked while eyeing perplexed the entire family. An ecologist husband, a mystical wife, and that apparently _insignificant_, but nonetheless mysterious daughter. His son's _fiance_. There was _no doubt _his Sephiroth deserved someone better - someone more chic, someone smarter - no doubt. But business was the most important thing. And Gast's cleverness, despite the _pathetic _way he used it, was nothing to despise. If one day he really was to become related to those people, he would have to set things up in a better way.

Sephiroth, on the other hand, had an unreadable face. He looked completely cold and distant, and he was doing everything possible not to meet his father's eyes. To be more precise, he was avoiding _everyone's _gaze. But there _was _one thing he found irritating. The way Hojo - the way his _father _– God, it was so difficult to think about him that way - was scanning Aeris.

'_Is he _judging _her? What the hell does he want?__'_

"Professor Gast.." Hojo began again, with provoking voice. "So I heard you'd need financial resources for the project you're working on." a knowing smile was depicted on his dry lips "You know ShinRa would be more than willing to help - as long as the project could bring introits for our society, when properly _exploited_."

Aeris blushed heavily. She hated that kind of conversations - they were so utterly _hypocritical _- and they _all _had _that _subtle meaning. She looked quickly at her father, who, for her relief, was keeping a proud expression.

For pure transgression, out of the blue, Sephiroth took Aeris' hand. He didn't know exactly what had pushed him to do such a thing - and if he had to guess, he would say he just wanted to unnerve Hojo. The girl, who lowered her head and opened her mouth a little for the surprise, let his long fingers entwine with hers, and then she started looking around as if she was doing something guilty. She was so _plainly _afraid of Hojo - and _yes_, Sephiroth hated that.

As a further proof they both didn't need, Hojo's glance fell on their holding hands, and an annoyed grimace appeared on his face. Aeris immediately tried to draw her hand away, but Sephiroth refused to let go. In fact, he held on tighter.

While professor Gast started declining more or less kindly Hojo's offer, Sephiroth leaned on Aeris, and, after nodding at Hojo, he whispered in her ear.

"_He sucks_"

After a moment of still surprise, Aeris started giggling, hiding her mouth with her free hand. Sephiroth smiled briefly. Now, her hand was firmly clutching his.

---

-,-'-,-11.20PM-,-'-,-

Sephiroth, needing to get rid of the boring and oppressive atmosphere which had formed around the sofas when the President and his father had started talking about the war, just choose to go away for a while, without even providing any explanation. He hated heartily when his father praised him - not him, his _skills_, to be precise - in public, and treated him like a stranger in private. Like a colleague. Like just the General - the master of war he was.

'_War..'_

That damned Wutainese war, and the miracles they all said he had done - he didn't want to hear them again. Living it once had been enough.

Was _repulsion _for war normal? The most evident case he had encountered had been his friend Zack. In a mission like any other, he had had a shocking mental breakdown; he had started crying, throwing his guns away, his sword away. He had attempted to escape from the army, shouting pointlessly, praying for forgiveness, saying he wanted to bring back all the people he had killed. They had him recovered in an hospital for weeks. And when he had rejoined Sephiroth's troops, he had never been again the one he used to be - sure, he was still stunningly good, and he had skills above all the other ones - but he had lost his verve - his _enthusiasm _- he did things almost mechanically.

That had been the first time Sephiroth had seen the devastating effects war could have on one's psyche.

'_Not on me, though.' _Was it because of the way they had grown him, was it just because of his personality?

"Sir? Would you like a drink?" a blond waitress showed him a platter with colourful and decorated glasses. He nodded quickly and grabbed one. He didn't really appreciate alcohol - but he knew he had to drink some of these, if he wanted to reach the end of this hell evening without exploding.

He spotted Zack in the middle of the dance floor, laughing like mad while dancing a typical Wutainese song with an old lady.

'_I wonder how many of these he has drunk already this evening.'_

Sephiroth raised the glass, and let the cold drink slide down his throat. Whatever it was, it was not that bad, after all.

"Drinking alone? Bad choice, for the house's owner."

A secure and sarcastic female voice tried to interrupt him, but he finished his drink till the last drop before turning to her. At the sight of that woman, he actually smiled.

"Scarlet. What a pleasure." he extended his hand to her, and she returned the gesture, shaking his hand, showing her perfect red nails, and then she kissed his cheek.

He liked that woman. She was known to be one of the most devious and smart women inside ShinRa - and hell, she was just like that. They had known each other from quite a long time.

They used to make fun of ShinRa since when they were young and new in the ambient. Then, at the young age of sixteen she had started to tell him all the worst habits of the ShinRa men she had laid with, and the names of the ones who had cheated one their wives with her. Now she didn't tell him things like those anymore - it was like they were implied. He thought it was funny to think about how many employees she had fooled to reach the point she had reached. She hated ShinRa, in her personal way, and she was far more intelligent than she gave away - just like him.

"So, are you having fun?" he asked her smiling strangely.

"Fun!" she exclaimed ironically, rolling her eyes, and she grabbed two glass from a waitress who was passing there, giving one of them to Sephiroth "You know perfectly all these stupid ShinRa men are everything but funny. They're all pretty pathetic old geezers."

Sephiroth laughed for some second, then Scarlet raised her glass.

"Let's toast - to the _stupidity _of ShinRa" she said with a cool grin.

And Sephiroth toasted more than willingly.

---

-,-'-,-00.33AM-,-'-,-

At that point of the night, Tifa could have gone through that corridor with her eyes closed. She had covered that distance so many times that she was doing it automatically now - and she was beginning to feel vaguely _tired _- after all, she had been working incessantly from earl afternoon. The thing was, the music and the party both seemed far from ending.

For like the tenth time in the evening, her eyes fell on Zack, who this time was far from the ballroom, a blond girl dragging him by his hand in a deserted corridor she could see from the arcades of the one she was in. Every time she had spotted him, he had been with a different girl - of the girl she had seen with him at the beginning of the party, she had lost tracks. She had even seen him dancing with some old ladies, and dancing with his cousin Aeris a few times, apparently trying to cheer her up. He was _hyperactive_. He hadn't stopped moving for a single minute during the whole party.

She didn't know if she kept looking at him for pure casualty, or if she was unconsciously searching for him every time. Sure thing was, his hair never passed unnoticed.

Zack stumbled on a stair, and the blond girl laughed loudly, grabbing his arm to keep him on both feet. They both seemed slightly drunk. Then she pushed him on the wall, and kissed him. For a second, Zack did nothing, but then he pulled away - or at least tried to. The girl kissed his neck, while he difficultly attempted to explain something to her, indicating someone down in ballroom. She didn't really look like she cared about what he was saying- and the next time she kissed him, he surrendered, circling her neck with his arm.

Tifa chuckled. If he had not lost count -and she was pretty sure she hadn't - that was the _sixth _girl Zack had kissed that evening. _Rich _men - they all had something wrong.

Quick and hurried - if _delicate _- steps resounding in her corridor drew her attention away from Zack and his sixth partner. And this time, it was Aeris. Alone.

If she already seemed down when she had entered the room previously that evening, she was looking completely shattered now - and resigned - and - incredibly - for the first time, there were hints of _anger _on her angelic face. She quickly eyed the dance floor downstairs, and turned her face away immediately after - yes. Her eyebrow _were _tensed - for Lords sake, she looked angry, even if she was close to tears - or maybe she had already cried, judging from the white handkerchief in her hand. Aeris exited the corridor pulling nervously a door open before coming too close to her, and Tifa was glad things went that way. She had no idea of what she could have told to that girl, in that moment, because _she _was angry, too. And every time Aeris was that way, it was just printed on her face that it was _his _fault.

'_A pathetic _loser_, that__'s what she is.' _Being that way, because of Sephiroth.  
But when she thought about it, she felt in danger. She felt like she was on the edge of -

Tifa looked down to the dance floor, and her jaw nearly dropped.

Sephiroth was _dancing _- Sephiroth. Never, never in the world she would have guessed he was able to do that. Oh, and _the way _he did that - _perfectly_. He and his partner - who looked like a fake blond Barbie girl - were waltzing as if they'd never done anything else in their life, flawlessly synchronized, making the other dancers down there look like headless chicken running around. And every now and then, the blonde whispered something to him, apparently hinting at someone in the room, with a sadistic smirk, making him laugh. Tifa didn't know what she was saying - but she was sure it had to be some sort of black humour - which would have disgusted a normal person - but it surely amused Sephiroth.

Tifa bit his lower lip, and closed her eyes. A sudden will to _smash _all the glasses she was carrying on the floor came over her.

Sephiroth was making spectacle of himself dancing with that slut - Aeris had run away crying - Zack was making out with random girls - and she had to carry void glasses.

Life was just unfair.

---

-,-'-,-01.25AM-,-'-,-

"Oh-ho. Is the General tired of dancing already? You two were giving spectacle, out there"

As Sephiroth and Scarlet reached the two infamous sofas, president ShinRa, smoking his cigar, made room on the sofa beside him for the two newcomers.

"No, I'm the one who's tired.." Scarlet replied almost panting, stroking her crimson satin dress "He's pretty much untiring, obviously."

"Scarlet, dear. You look gorgeous as always. And every time I see you two dance, you look better than the last time." the president complimented her while she sat next to him, dragging Sephiroth with her.

Scarlet smiled with satisfaction. "Funny thing is, I only see him when we dance."

"Where's Aeris?" Sephiroth asked, as soon as he noticed her absence.

Hojo remained silent this time. He just smiled wisely, eyeing sexy Scarlet, her décolleté, and her hand on Sephiroth's knee.

"She just said she was tired, and went away." Professor Gast replied politely. But his gaze was accusatory.

Sephiroth made an attempt to stand up but failed miserably.

"Where do you think you are you going,..?" the President exclaimed cheerfully, putting off his cigar "You are not leaving another time, dear General. We have so many things to talk about!" he burst out into laughter, turning to Hojo "Your son is such a sneaky man when it comes to bureaucracy!"

Sephiroth silently rolled his eyes, and then he raised his hand. Immediately a waitress came to him, giving him a cocktail. If he had to go through this, he just needed it.

Oh, yes - _how _he hated bureaucracy.

---

-,-'-,-02.03AM-,-'-,-

When it happened, Tifa had actually no idea about what time it was. She could imagine it was _late _- but just a few guests had already left the room - and that let her suppose that damned party was _still _far from ending. She had almost reached the kitchen with her pile of dirty dishes, when a violent nausea caught her. She unceremoniously rested all the dishes on the floor, searching for an escape - because she still _had _a dignity, and she didn't want to puke in the middle on the corridor, as deserted as it may be.

She spotted the black and starry sky from the glass door leading to a near terrace, and rushed towards it. She flung the glass door open; at the sudden change of atmosphere, the cool salty breeze coming from the cliffs on her bare arms, the irritating music softened, she immediately felt better - but the instinct had not completely disappeared yet - and her head bent down abruptly as she leaned over the railings, letting out a moan, a clench around her stomach. It was more the gesture than anything else - her gaze was now lost in the black wavy sea down there. But she was sweating, and her hands were trembling, even if they were tightened around the cold railing.

'_It's a damn _rebellious _creature in here' _she instinctively touched her abdomen '_No. I was _not _forgetting about you. I _was not.'

"Tifa..?"

Recovering from her position, Tifa - in a sort of terror - turned to the one who had just spoken .

Zack - messy black hair, lipstick's tracks on his neck and his face, a cigarette between his fingers, an expression - if possible - even more outworn than hers - and a bemused _smile _on his face.

The shock was multiple: in no particular order - he had _recognised _her, he had seen her in her inglorious attempt to _throw up_, he had remembered her _name_.

"Oh - no." the hiss escaped her lips, while she tried to cover her face with her trembling hand, turning away from him. "Fuck.."

And Zack laughed - of all things, throwing his cigarette beyond the railing.

"Are you okay? You don't need to be ashamed - actually, if _I_ had to be ashamed of all the people I've puked in front of, I'd never have the courage to see any of my friends again!" he exclaimed, walking towards her.

That made her laugh, and relax a little.

"God sake.. I - well - _apologise _for the horrible show, Zack.." she blurted out, a half smile, still trying to avoid direct eye contact, an utterly upset expression on her face.

'_Shit. I've _puked _in front of him. Oh - fuck it. Fuck. _Fuck_'_

"Whoa! You remember my name! That's just - wow." he smiled enthusiastically, then she touched her shoulder for a second "Oh man.. You look terrible - what the hell.. Don't tell me you have been working restlessly all the evening long.." his expression was sincerely worried now.

"Quite right.." she smirked, touching her forehead. She was still trying to deal with the fact that Zack had seen her puking. _'The _worst _of me. They all have to see the worst of me'. _And despite that, Zack was still there, talking gently with her.

"Sephiroth, that despotic bastard.." Zack joked "Well now you're going to have a break - I'll force you to."

"I'm not sure it's a good idea.." Tifa chuckled, looking around suspiciously - she just hoped Nicolle was not around - that devil would have not forgiven her even 5 seconds of inactivity.

"No no.. wait. It _is _a good idea. If you could only see your face right now, you would be scared, too." Zack insisted.

Tifa laughed loudly. "Well thank _you_ so much.."

Zack laughed too, and begun shaking his hands in front of him, as if he was trying to take back what he has just said. "No, Tifa, scratch that. That was _not _what I meant. Just.. ah ah.. Sephiroth must be right when he says I have a big mouth." He sat down on the marble floor beside a group of five or six void glasses someone had left there, sighing and running a hand trough his hair - which after the gesture came out even more messy than before. "Actually - you're beautiful, Tifa. Surely more beautiful than three quarters of the women in there" he swept one arm towards the ballroom.

Tifa smiled silently, while sitting on the fence. Zack scratched briefly his head again, and she shivered at the thought of _who _used to touch his hair that way - was she just being pathetic, finding similarities between those two people - or did they _really _have something in common?

'_He's _gone_. And you will have to face it someday__'_

"Are you feeling better now?" Zack asked, turning to her. "Hell. If I were you - ah." he paused bitterly, as if the realisation of Tifa's _actual _position had just stroked him. It was not easy at all - and it was a little unnerving, too. "There's actually nothing helpful I can say or do, I'm afraid"

"No - I mean - it's okay. You are the first person who's treated me in nicely, this night." she just replied.

Zack's limpid laugh resounded in the terrace as he shook his head.

"This place must be hell. Well - if this makes you feel better - _you're _one of the firsts people who've been nice to me this night, _too_. Dear Lord - they're almost mad in there. They don't care about _anything_." Then he paused, and noticed Tifa's stare. He looked back at her with a worried face, as if something very important had just come to his mind. "Christsake. Don't tell me I have _lipstick _on my face. That would be - so _humiliating_."

Tifa literally burst out into laughter, and Zack immediately started rubbing random parts of his face, putting more effort around the lips.

"Shit - shit. So I _do _have lipstick on my face - oh God. Please stop laughing, this is a serious issue." he stood up, while Tifa was still giggling. "Are there any marks left?" he asked hopefully, moving his face closer to her.

"Er - actually, yes." Tifa smiled biting her lips, and then she touched with her finger her cheek, her jaw and her neck, to show Zack where the stains were.

Zack let his head fall in his hands.  
"The _neck _-" he hissed "I was forgetting about the _neck_." he looked at her helplessly "I must look like a complete moron."

"Well.. Maybe" she joked. Then she pulled out her handkerchief, and gave it to him. "Here. This might help" she suggested, seeing that he was still wiping his cheek, with the only result of dirtying his hand, too.

"Thank you so much.." he replied with rush, taking the handkerchief in his hand, his eyes still widened for the absurd situation. But then he paused, as if he was having a rethought about it. "Wait - you do it. I can't even see where the damn lipstick is." he sighed "Tifa, trust me. I know I'm not in the most suitable situation for being believable - but I'm not as stupid as I look. It must be for the innumerable cocktails they kept serving me.. "

"Ah ah.. Don't worry." Tifa stroked her handkerchief on his jaw. '_Cocktails, eh? I bet he's the type who ends up this way at every party..'_. But despite that, she couldn't think that Zack was stupid. Not at all. "At least you've made me laugh. I don't laugh that much, in here."

"Oh no, no, _no_!" Zack burst out again, looking desperate "And _Gast _stopped me to talk just before I came here out. My _uncle_. He has seen me this way - that is way he had such a perplexed face - oh shit.. is that _one _brain cell I have?" he slapped his forehead.

Tifa didn't know if she was feeling this way just because she was so alone in that house - but that Zack. As she trailed the handkerchief down to his neck, and he was making a face at the though of his uncle Gast, she couldn't hep but think he was lovely - he was the person everyone would want to have among their friends. Maybe he could be mistaken for an airhead - but it looked like one who could give his heart for the people he cared about.

'_When he's worried, he looks just like _him_' _

Even if she was trying hard to scratch those thoughts, people were sadly true when they said you kept searching for the dead ones among the alive ones.

"Why am I not surprised, Zack, that you are receiving _personal treatments_ from one of my waitresses?" that unmistakable sarcastic voice sounded a bored and a little annoyed this night, too.

Sephiroth.

Tifa completely forgot she was wiping lipstick away from Zack's face when she saw him just out the door of the terrace, the yellow light of the corridor beyond him, as he tried to keep his silver locks still when the night breeze made them flow. Her primary instinct was to hide now - but the thing was not that easy - her face was completely exposed because of the ponytail. So she just lowered her head, almost leaning her forehead on Zack's chest. _'If he had not recognised me before..'_

"Ohi Seph! What are you doing here? You escaping from the dance floor, too?" Zack replied cheerfully, waving at him.

No, Tifa concluded – He still had not recognised her, thanks to the darkness, and thanks to his scarce interest - he had recognised her servant's uniform for the evening, though. So in that moment she was just a waitress like any others. Suddenly, she realised how strange that thought was.  
'_Not that if he recognised me I would be _different _from the others..__'  
_There was something so unnerving in all that.

So Sephiroth just snorted as he approached Zack, completely ignoring her.

"Don't talk about this hell party. I'll let _ages _pass before I let them organize another one." he snapped. He looked completely frustrated and _tense_, as if he had been tortured all night long. "Now go inside, you idiot, and tell your girlfriend to calm down. She's beating up a girl - and the last thing I need this night is a _brawl_. Gods sake Zack - if you _dare _bring another one of your uncivilized sluts in my house.."

Tifa quite didn't like the situation. Setting back the handkerchief in her pocket, she stepped away from Zack, still keeping her face turned away from Sephiroth, and started walking towards the glass door.

"You! Whoever you are, you must be naively optimistic, if you think you can just crawl away like that. Servants should not flirt or romp around with guests, they have jobs to do."

Her hand was already on the doorknob, but she could do anything apart from freezing in her position, and biting her lower lip with rage. For a second she considered the idea of just running away, pretty sure that Sephiroth was not in the mood to lose his precious time with a servant.

But - _shockingly _- he grabbed her arm and made her turn back.  
She almost gasped, trying to withdraw her arm from him, and stupidly hiding her face with her free hand.

"Seph, please! Let Tifa in peace! She wasn't feeling well a few minutes ago.." Zack immediately intervened, placing his hand on Sephiroth's back, and trying to stop him.

Usually, it was '_Tifa Lockhart_' the infamous name, and not just '_Tifa'_, so it took him a few seconds more to realise _whose _arm he was holding. And when he did, he was unwillingly thrown in a sort of unjustified confusion. Was it _possible _that he had not recognised her before?

He slapped her hand away from her face nervously, just to find _her _angry crimson eyes there, staring at him with no fear this time - just hate and rage. So it _was _her.

"_You_." he smirked, pulling her definitely away from the door "I should have known. Where there are troubles, _you _are present."

"No, Seph, wait. There are no problems here." Zack chuckled while resting his hand on her shoulder. "She was just.."

"_Zachary_." Sephiroth put one hand on his temple, as if suffering from a terrible headache. "Listen. _This _is none of your business. All you have to do now is going inside and hold down that human fiend you've entered in my palace."

While he was speaking, Sephiroth couldn't prevent his eyes from falling on Lockhart a few times - and surprisingly every time she was staring back. That was a challenge, again. _'Christsake she looks completely different this evening..'_ He was still upset for the fact that he had not recognised her.

"Fine, fine.." Zack smiled, raising his hand in surrender. "Wait a second.. _Which one _of the girls are you talking about? Don't make me go inside and bring away the wrong one.." he dumbly asked Sephiroth, and without even listening to the answer, he turned to Tifa "Is the lipstick gone?" he winked at her, who was difficulty repressing a laugh, and then he kissed her cheek. "See you soon, darling.. Don't let this bastard mistreat you.. Okay, okay… Now I'm going.. I'll leave you two alone.." he jokingly elbowed Sephiroth before disappearing beyond the glass door while waving at them.

The total silence which followed Zack's exit was strange. Now Tifa and Sephiroth were not even looking at each other. All she could think about was Sephiroth dancing with that blonde femme fatale, and Aeris walking alone in the corridor, the handkerchief in her hand. And all _he _could think about was her face. It attracted him - no. but at least it picked his interested - he had never seen her face the way he was seeing it in that moment - maybe because he had never seen her face _at all _- he didn't know how, she had always managed to hide it.

"What do you want?" Her curt question cut through the silence. All she wanted to do was to get away. Because that was dangerous. It was a total waste of time - a total waste. So it was better to just cut it - cut _what _exactly, she didn't know. It was just a vague phantom, for the moment.

"You're not attending your duty." the words were automatic, thrown there just to appear formal to her. The problem was something else - her _face _was the problem. Her unnerving behaviour was the problem.

"I came here out to _throw up_. Are you happy now?" she was losing it. Completely. She looked at him, at the way his uniform fit tightly to his chest, the way he had loosened his tie. She had to struggle hard against her instinct of snatching away from his shirt some of those shiny gold medals. She wanted to do it - so _badly_.

She turned suddenly away from him, and then she began picking up the void glasses on the ground. But she still wanted to smash her hand on his chest - and tear away those medals. She wanted to punch him on his chest. And it was becoming an obsessive thought - a completely distracting one.

"Surely, that didn't look like throwing up.." Sephiroth was deliberately provoking her now.

The struggle - the _struggle _she had to pull not to smash her fists _against _him - the _nerve_. Just a few times in her whole life her body had strived with her mind so much.

"Shut the hell up! What do you want - you saw _nothing_!"

"You know, Lockhart, you even look _decent_, tonight." It was impossible to state if he was calibrating what he was saying, or if he was losing it just like her.

And that made her _so _angry. So angry and helpless - because she couldn't believe it.  
"Fuck you." she shot back, the thought of her hands on his chest still bothering her.

"I was _complimenting _you, if you hadn't noticed.." he hissed, stepping towards her.

"And I was saying '_Fuck. You'_" she repeated.

'_This is a loss of time. We are not going anywhere - because this _can't _go anywhere. It can__'t even _be_, for heaven__'s sake' _She didn't want to be despised by Sephiroth, and this was cruel truth - but anything positive he was going to say about her, she could never have believed it. '_Dead end. This is so damn _useless. _He has to go away.__'_

"Please, go away." she let out.

And from that sentence, the weakness she had been hiding all along became plain. But he was too messed up to understand - a strange pride matter was blurring his mind. And his mind was _never _blurred.

"Why?" he asked.  
And he meant it.

But to Tifa, it sounded just like one of his usual challenges. And she was not in the mood - if she could not punch him - or pull his hair - see him _bleeding _somewhere - she wanted to see his blood - she needed to know he was there, and he was _human_. That she was _not _dealing with something unreal. But all she could get there was the eerie silver glow of his hair under the moonlight - and stupid medals - and a perfect uniform. Nothing real, while she was even too real - void glasses in his trembling hands - a _slave_. So all she wanted to do was loosing her hair, and hiding her face again, as pretty - as _decent _- as it may be. She wanted to forget all this, whatever it was, while the aching image of Aeris walking in the deserted corridor, so sad - but also angry, yes - was slowly replacing the one of her hands on Sephiroth's chest.

Aeris.

"I want to tell you something." she said, standing a meter in front of him. It looked like a duel, both their heads up stubbornly now. "You can be powerful and all, Sephiroth. You can have all the pretty things you want. But, when you _break _them-" abruptly, she smashed violently on the marble one of the void glasses she had in her hand, and then she stomped on it "and _kick _them - no matter how hard you can try to put the pieces back together." she looked down at the destroyed glass, and then she looked Sephiroth in his eyes "They will never be the same again."

Sephiroth's irritated glance fell on the shards on the ground.

"I don't know what you're talking about." he just said after a while.

But the too long silence before his sentence, his brief chuckle and the way he was looking at Tifa suggested that he was lying. She didn't even bother replying to him. She merely looked at him with an almost disgusted but vaguely satisfied smirk.

Hurried paces were reaching them, as they stood there in front of each other, in utter silence. Lockhart was looking at the broken glass now, and Sephiroth was still concentrated on her face. Undoubtedly - she was a beautiful woman. And this night there was no possibility to miss it. But her face was so outworn.. _I came here out to throw up_.. Thinking about it rationally, that was likely to be the truth. She was _pregnant_, after all.

He had to admit it - the sentence she had just spoken had surprised him. But there was something irritating in the whole thing.

'_Who the fuck does she think she is, coming here and _lecturing _me_?_'_

"Tiffa!" Nicolle's almost hysteric voice claimed her from the terrace's door. "Finally I found you! Your area is in utter confusion, and you've left dirty dishes in the _middle _of the corridor! What do you think you're doing, having _breaks _whenever you desire it?" Seeing that the woman's gaze was still locked to the ground, Nicolle stepped closer, and noticed the broken glass "Look at what you've done!" she hissed "Clean this mess - _quickly_."

Tifa remained silent. That was okay. All she wanted was this to finish. There was too much attention drawn on her. And she was tired of it. But Sephiroth grabbed her shoulder and kept her from bending to pick up the remnants of the glass.

"Wait." He looked a bit stunned from his own gesture, but quiet at the same time. Tifa expected him to pull away, but he let his touch linger there. " It was my fault here. Make some other maid clean it up, Nicolle. And let Lockhart go to bed. She's not feeling well."

Before leaving her shoulder, Sephiroth's hand trailed briefly and distractively down to her shoulder-blade.

What the hell was happening? Had she just _imagined _it?  
She couldn't even breathe - why did she have to be always so uncomfortable, around him? Why did she always have to look that weak and _speechless_? And why did _he _have to do something so _stunning_, and flattering, and-

During the whole thing, her gaze had never left the broken glass. _'I don't _want _this to happen. This can't happen..' _The image of Aeris in her mind. The image of a woman helplessly in love with Sephiroth. A loser.

Tifa never looked at her, but nonetheless she could feel envious and angry glances Nicolle was shooting in her direction.

"Yes Sir" she replied, kneeling briefly in front of Sephiroth, and running inside again.

Tifa could not have been able to remove her eyes from the ground even if she had wanted it. She was still so astonished, stupidly silent - and she was probably looking so _insignificant_.

On the other hand, there were tons of bastard or sarcastic words he could have said to her right in that moment - instead, he left the terrace without saying anything.

---

-,-'-,-02.47AM-,-'-,-

The last time Tifa went through _the _corridor, she had taken off her uniform, and loosened her hair. She _really _wasn't feeling well - and her primary instinct now was to get to her room - sleep - and forget everything. And, possibly, get out of her head the feeling of Sephiroth's hand on her shoulder blade.

She unwillingly eyed the dance floor - it was still full.

She didn't know if that was just a coincidence - or if her words had actually gone somewhere. Fact was, Sephiroth was dancing with Aeris. The girl looked so incredulous, her hand timidly resting on his uniform.

'_So there you are. Are you happy now?'_

_  
_Worrying thing was, no. She was still not happy.  
She was still just a slave, who would have to raise her child in that shitty place - in those humiliating conditions. She hated fairytales, and she hated daydreaming. That night especially. It was just one thought she had in her mind right there. And it was:

'_Fuck Cinderella.'_

**End of chapter 6**

* * *

**Author'sNotes:** Excuse me for the long wait.. Thank you so much for supporting me .. thank you so much to my beta sodacolapop.. -hugs sodacolapop-  
If you have suggestions, comments, everything, tell me.. because I'm depressed and angsty about this.. 

-Crack corner: Are you a talented author? Are you bored? Don't waste your time on canon..Write a Sephiroth/Scarlet!I will be reading, most likely! - end of crack corner.-

Swamp-Eyes


	7. Tie Knotting

**Subservience **

* * *

**Chapter 7  
****Tie-Knotting**

* * *

_He would always win the fight -  
Bang bang _

_  
He shot me down, bang bang-_

_(Sonny Bono)_

* * *

Twenty years old, and she had never noticed that the sunsets were so _red_.  
Tifa was running as fast as she could, the rocky ground resounding under her worn-out boots, her hard breath muted by the howling wind coming from the blue wavy sea, the smell of salt reaching her nostrils. She would have even _liked _that place, if it hadn't been her personal inferno. 

It was her free hour - because yes, when she had been working in Sephiroth's palace for a month, she had the reward - a _free _hour every evening, from 6 to 7.  
'_Just how very.. _Kind _of them.'  
_Tifa had never had a doubt as of how to occupy that hour – _training._ The thing that had been her only reason to live years ago - martial arts.

And now that she had been out of it for such a long time, she loved to push her body to the limit, to collapse on the ground when she couldn't take it anymore, to bend her muscles again and again, finding pleasure in the sensation of _needles _piercing them.  
In other words, she just wanted _herself_ back.

After some days of exercise, she had noticed she could cut her daily job's time in half, and her free time had increased even more. Every time she had nothing to do, she went out on the cliff to _run_ - and it was not jogging - but _running _really, as if her life depended on it. Perhaps, it was a manifestation of her latent desire.  
So, after some days again, she could run for an hour without even becoming tired. And her job had never been so easy. It was _all _pathetically easy.

Then, she had cut her hair.

The black mess that used to reach her tights in casual rebel locks, was now smooth and ordinate, reaching down on her back, and almost squared fringe always half-hiding her unsettling eyes, which gave her a severe but mysterious look.

Panting, Tifa bent down on the ground, sustaining her whole weight with just her arms. She could see her own nerves tensing, old muscles reappearing - her smooth locks touching the rocks like a black rain - it was like - it was a _rebirth_, that training. As usual, she started bending down, her eyes flying away in the sea - but there was nothing on the horizon - just the sea. And the sea again. And the sun dipping low behind the endless sea.

And she felt like she had no damned escape…none what-so-ever.

---

When he noticed it was late, Sephiroth couldn't help but be a little surprised. The office work he was doing had surely made him lose the conception of time - half past _six_.

With an intrigued smile, he left on the desk the paper he was previously looking at, and rolled on his chair to face the glass wall. Since a few weeks, there was a curious spectacle around that hour of the day - the _stupid slave_ running around the palace.

He had to admit he had been quite surprised the first time he had seen her doing that. It had happened by accident - just an eye had abandoned the desk and noticed the woman running on the edge of the cliffs, her unmistakable black hair flowing around her. She was looking so tired, and yet so _stubbornly_ undeafeted. He had interrupted his work, and waited for her to complete her whole tour around the palace only to reappear under his glass wall; the woman looked exhausted as she could be seen collapsing on the ground, her chest moving spasmodically up and down, her mouth quickly gaping – and yet all this he could notice as his cat-sight was legendary. In a way, he had been so tempted to reach her - and tell her something - even to _pull _her back to her feet - For godssake, the _uncontrollable _desire he had within was frustrating.

'_What is with that woman? Feh, she's _just _a slave..'_

Hence, watching her had become a sort of pastime. There were times he looked out of the glass wall and she came in sight and hell it felt perfect, while there were other times he observed from a distance.

And as the days passed by, he himself saw the fruits of her labors, her progress; she was able to complete the tour around the palace more and more times - God, he had watched her _running _for a friggin' hour the last time he had caught sight of her. As hard as it could be, he had to admit the woman _had _resistance - and her past as a fighter had always told of the obvious - _no one_ could reach those levels with just a few _weeks _of training.

This evening, he was expecting her as usual to appear, but a feeling of uneasiness was growing. There was even a soft _tension _in it - a sort of tension that he couldn't really associate with any other kind of emotion he had felt, which was strange considering that his whole life had always been _pure angst_.

Sephiroth tapped his fingers on the desk while waiting; he was regarding the gorgeous sunset as just a background detail, as all he longed for seem to make everything else invisible. He was almost stupidly, so childishly fearing that she might not appear this time. That maybe she was not feeling well - Gods sake - just _Godssake_. Why did the idea of not seeing her train suddenly become such a tragedy to him?

'_No - Wait. Maybe I don't even _want _to know why'_

Now more than five minutes had passed - but he still hadn't seen her. That was strange, because in the last days it had never took her more than three minutes and a half to complete the whole lap around the palace - and _yes_, he _had _checked her times. He shook his head, finding that his behaviour was just pathetic. He stood up nervously, determined to reach the door. But his mind just wouldn't let him.

'_Okay then. 10 seconds. I'll give her 10 _seconds_.'  
_That was a compromise - between his _rationality _and his _will _to attend his pastime.  
One. Two. Three. And the sun was still setting. Five. Six. He put all his papers in a drawer. Seven. Eight. Nine. He inhaled and prepared himself to leave the room.

Ten.

And her slender silhouette appeared, shadowed by the contrast with the sun in the background, running so fast, and so graciously - like a free spirit.

Sephiroth paused.  
Ten indeed.  
'_Damn irony of this..' _

"Ehy."

The female voice hit Sephiroth like a lightning-stroke, and he immediately drew his gaze away from the glass wall with a sudden movement, his eyes almost panicking, as if he had just been caught doing something terrible.  
'_Because admit it. You _do _feel guilty for your idiocy.' _

"Aeris?" he asked, walking quickly as far as he could from the tempting glass wall.  
'_Stupid - stupid curiosity. Screw that.'  
_"You need something? I was - _working_"  
Sephiroth crossed his arms on his chest, looking a bit impatient.

Aeris' gaze was locked to the white tiles of the ground, and her hair was strangely loosened, distinctly more straight that usual. She caressed her arm in embarrassment, blushing just a little.  
"Oh. Sorry then. Maybe I should just leave."

Was it just him, or did she actually looked different from usual? For an unknown reason he couldn't concentrate on her figure.  
When she turned away from him, he was still strangely dumbfounded.  
'_Why on earth did she _come _here?'_

"Aeris, wait." Sephiroth moved a few paces, reaching for her. And she stopped like she had been waiting nothing else. "I'm not that busy, really. If you need something, tell me."

For a second, his eyes betrayed him, and he looked outside the glass wall.  
'_Hell. This is becoming a damned _obsession_.'_

To force himself to stop looking outside, he grabbed Aeris' arm - and he felt something wrong in the very first moment he did it. When she turned back, and their gazes met, it felt strangely like deja-vù, even if he was unable to understand why.  
Slowly, he realized that Aeris' arm felt way thinner than he remembered in his fingers. And that was not all.

"Did you cut your hair?" he asked surprised, noticing that the brown locks that used to fall on her cheeks were now sharply cut just above her eyes.

Aeris blushed heavily.  
"I - I just thought that - I don't know if - well I -"

"You look good"

Instantly - instantly she melted. She relaxed and let out a breathe, trying to contain a smile. Her heart was bumping so fast and so hard against her chest she was afraid he might hear.  
"Thanks." she placed her hand on Sephiroth's forearm, not looking at him anymore, but past his shoulders, on the horizon visible in the glass wall, and finally, settled on the desk. An empty desk. She wanted to believe it was not all wasted - she wanted to hold on to that shred of hope that the two of them still had a possibility, even if everyday that passed she was just falling apart more and more - and she could do nothing to keep Sephiroth beside her. But despite all, she still wanted to love him.

He, on the other hand, was quite busy staring at her, as if he felt he was still failing to see something important - a connection to something - a reason explaining the strange feeling he had about her appearance.

When Aeris' eyes fell on the completely void desk, he felt trapped. °_I was – working°  
_'_The. Fuck.'  
_But he didn't even have the will to find himself an excuse - that _thing _was becoming enough bothersome without including Aeris in the picture.  
'That woman _is bothersome. She had been bothersome from the very first time they brought her skinny ass in here'_

In front of him, Aeris was still looking rather depressed. Not that it was something he was not used to - just this time - he didn't know. She looked completely different with the new hair.  
"Ehy." he stroked her cheek briefly "Is there something wrong? Tell me."  
His voice was dry - but that was all he could give her in that moment. He checked the clock. Quarter to seven. He had an important reunion that evening. _And Lockhart should have completed at least another lap, _he added in his mind.

"No - nothing really. I - I wanted to see you. That's all." she breathed.

He _was _feeling guilty for some reason - there _was _something bruising deep in his chest. But he was still too confused to sort that out.  
"Listen - if you want to talk, we can do so tonight. Now I have to get ready for the reunion with ShinRa. Not that I'm looking forward to that, as you can imagine."

Aeris nodded.  
"See you this evening, then."

She paused, her fingers lingering inches from his chest, her eyes meeting his deep-emerald, sharp, almost transparent eyes. When he placed his hand on the back of her neck, and drew her a little closer, she felt butterflies in her stomach. Like the first time - every time was like the first time. Every time he did _anything _to her, she still felt the same emotions - and now she was _hesitating _as he leaned on her, her eyes betraying her desire to escape like birds in a cage, her hand tentatively touching his abdomen - and the softness of his lips - and -

She knew it. As soon as she could get out of the room, she would start to cry.  
Because everything was so _heartbreaking,_ so damn heartbreaking.

---

After having run for nearly an hour, Tifa finally began to feel tired - but not tired enough to forget what day it was. Wednesday. And Wednesday meant basically one thing - the weapons' room. Once a week, she had to go to the _place _she loathed so much, among those _swords _she hated with a passion, because they reminded her of the things she was desperately trying to forget. But her job was her job - and especially recently she had no will to draw Nicolle's anger to herself.

'_As if I don't have enough problems already'_

Dragging with her the accessories she knew she had to use in the weapon's room, Tifa reached it waving a little; she still felt a cold lump which had formed down her throat from the long run, as she tried to wipe away the sweat from her face. Suddenly, the heat inside the palace seemed unbearable.

When she entered the room, her eyes fell as usual on the Wutainese sword planted into the wall - yes, it hadn't been removed since _that _time when the _great one _embedded it there. And every time she looked at it, the unpleasant encounter between her and Sephiroth hit her mind, like a barrage of bad memories – which it was, a bad memory, that is. And the thing she seemed completely unable to forget was not the fighting itself - but the look in Sephiroth's eyes when he had encaged her against the wall.

'_Cocky asshole so full of himself'_

Like every week, she grabbed the sword firmly, and tried to pull it out - since that day, she had just pathetically failed every time she had gone for it, and lately she had just stopped trying because it was too frustrating.

But this time the sword just came out with an easiness that astonished her.

Still surprised, Tifa looked at the wall, at the pieces of plaster on the floor, and then at the sword in her hands, at the red signs engraved that were previously hidden in the depths of the wall.

'_I have extracted it.'_

So what was it? Those weeks of training had been enough to bring back to her the major part of her past strength? Sure thing was, the sword was there in her hand, and the effort she had made to extract it was minimal. Without thinking about it twice, Tifa started performing a kata with the sword, in the middle of the room. She was not used to such long swords - but manipulating it didn't seem that difficult to her right in that moment. The air was hissing at her sudden movements, and all the other swords were spinning around her. She was fast.

When the metal of her Wutainese sword clenched so unexpectedly against other metal with a loud clank, it scared her out of her mind. She yelled, and dropped the sword instantly, withdrawing her hand as fast as she could.

While the Wutainese sword was still clinging after its fall onto the tiles, the clear sound of a sadistic but actually bemused laugh pierced her mind, which was still blurred from the shock.

Sephiroth was there, a casual sword in his hand - and he was now enjoying the view of a terrified girl who resembled an abandoned cat, with widened eyes and hard breathe - while keeping his head up with his bony hand. He was wearing tight black pants and a white shirt, unbuttoned on the sleeves and halfway on his chest; a loosened tie was hanging around his neck.

All her thoughts were spinning in her head like liquid fire, feeding on the anger that acted like fuel to this flame, blood rushing to her cheeks, and she could feel the cold sweat condensing on her skin. And that soft _laugh _- it was too much.

Tifa rushed towards him with shocking speed and - incredibly- she managed to catch him off guard. She knew she would have never been able to do such a thing if not by surprising him - he always _underestimated_ her, by the way - but since he was still laughing, he was actually unable to stop the hard push of the woman, which in a fraction of second had him pinned against the wall astonished - _completely _astonished - eyes burning from the humiliation as one of the swords that once hung now came falling down from the sudden impact.

"What _the fuck _is your purpose!" she screamed till she was breathless.

But she had no time to fill her lungs with oxygen again - or to set up proper defense - that in an abrupt change of position he made her stomach clench harder that before. In a breath, he made her fall to the ground, and now _he _was the one who pinned her firmly against the tiles by her neck , his fingers dangerously around her throat, his hair almost curtaining her face, and his black tie touching her forehead.  
Tifa turned her head over to face him, a horrified grimace on her face, partly wincing from the pain in her back, partly flushing from her plain weakness against him.

And he actually seemed like he was finding an infinite pleasure in that position of supremacy, because all he felt was control right in that moment - she was under him, she was inferior and she had lost, literally.

"It was _impressive _what you were able to do to me in just a few seconds, Lockhart - and _trust _me - that is not something I can past through without _reacting_"

Once again, her breath was taken away by the sudden movement, the ground disappearing from her back. Sephiroth smashed her ruthlessly against the wall, in the exact same point she had smashed him previously. Her head hit the wall violently, and for a second she saw all black and violet around her, a strong sensation of nausea preventing her form doing anything.

But it didn't last long. Before he had the time to hit her again - or even to enjoy his partial victory, Tifa's right hand reached for the nearest sword on the wall. Sephiroth followed her gesture immediately with a speed that made their movements seem almost _simultaneous_ - and the clash of steel against steel that followed filled the room louder even than before.

After that, they remained absolutely still.

He was quiet, not giving anything away, one hand around her throat, the other one keeping the sword in mid air, the same position he had sparred her blow.  
On the other hand, she was panting, her black locks plastered on her forehead from the sweat - but despite all her expression was clearly aggressive; she was looking blatantly ready for another round of that stunt- maybe she was even waiting for it - her right hand holding the sword with rage, her left hand trembling while pulling his tie around his neck.

Their position was almost symmetrical.

"You know a _normal _person should be _lying _on the floor screaming and spitting _blood_" Sephiroth hissed to her, an almost satisfied smirk on his face. He looked almost electrified for the strength he had found in that woman.

"And you know that a normal person should have had his throat _sliced _after this treatment" she shot back, pushing her sword against his just a little. Her voice was hoarse.

He let go of her neck, and immediately after she let go of his tie. They studied each other for a moment, then they spoke in unison.

"But I'm not normal."

She had sounded more disgusted, and he had sounded more arrogant - but they had spoken the _same _words in the _same _moment. Tifa looked as if she had just been outraged, while Sephiroth looked confused and scandalized.

He moved away from her, placing himself in the middle of the room, assuming a fighting stance.

"Lockhart. Spar."  
It was an order.

She sneered.  
"I thought I told you once I am _not _a swordswoman."

"Spar."

"Fuck you."

"_Spar_."

Her lips trembled, a knot pulsed in her chest. She flung with fury the sword on the tiles, as if she was trying to kill it, and then she faced Sephiroth again.

"I said I don't want to spar! I. Don't. want. To. _Spar_! Who the fuck do you think you are, coming here and ordering me to do things I'm not even _supposed _to do just to _stroke _your damn ego and prove you're better than me! Yes, you _are _- you're better than me, and I suck, but _don't _make me _spar _- because it's still too fucking _painful_!"

While finishing her unstoppable flow of words surging from her heart, she kicked violently the sword in his direction.

Why did it have to be that way?  
She had thought that shit was over - she had thought she could now maintain control of herself in his presence now - because now she was stronger - and more lucid - and more _beautiful _– but how wrong she was.  
He still managed to make her _that _upset.  
'_A pathetic loser you are.'_

Sephiroth remained silent while picking up all the fallen swords and putting them back at their place.  
"Tell me. Was your man a swordsman..?" he hesitated "In this case, I apologize."

She couldn't believe her ears. She was so confused that she felt a sort of buzz in her head, and her whole body trembled as if she was on the edge of doing something terrible. But, also, tears were pressing deep in her eye.  
_Apology_. _From his lips._

"Go away"  
Her voice was low and sharp - it was a killer voice.

"And why's that?"

She smacked her hand in the air in exasperation.

"You ask why? You ask _why_? Because we have _nothing to do with each other_, and we can't have a civil conversation - because that is impossible do you understand? Because I am your _slave _and we _can't _have a conversation - and honestly I don't even _want _to have a conversation - because I _hate _you, you're a hopeless _bastard and its_ far easier than bearing this shit you're doing now - so please just _leave_! I don't want - I don't want - your - your.." the word was trapped in her throat "Gods sake go _AWAY_!"

"I don't understand your problem."  
Sephiroth seemed frustrated.

"You _can't _get my problem! Because you're not in my position!"  
She was still yelling furiously.

'_I don't want him to be kind - I don't want him to be even _correct _- I just want to _hate _him'  
_Because he could be the lowest of the jerks when he wanted to - but when he acted that way - like that time he had held her in the bathroom - that time he had written her the note with his age - that time he had asked her if she was okay - that time he let her take a night off from herjob - well - he just threw her world upside down and her plans about being cold and detached.  
'_Gods sake I don't want to _like _him - that just would be so -'_

"I will not ask you to spar again - if that makes you feel better" he tried to calm her down.

'_And why the hell would you want _me _to feel better?'  
_Her mind was screaming in confusion - but she kept that to herself.  
That man - she would never be able to understand him.  
"Whatever." she just let out, pretending to be annoyed and rolling her eyes. But she was flushing.

Sephiroth finished slowly to button the sleeves of his shirt.

"Before I leave, I have to ask you a favour." he moved closer to her, as if nothing had ever happened - as if they had not been struggling against each other until a minute ago. "I hate this kind of thing, but I have an important reunion this evening. Here" he handed her the black tie "you should knot it for me - are you able to do that?"

The request, which was so trivial even by itself, sounded utterly ridiculous in the context. He had been smacking her head against the wall - right _there - _right on _that _wall, a meter from them - and now he was asking her to _knot _his tie? Maybe he was just having fun _teasing _her. Maybe there was no point in getting upset again.  
'_Remember, Tifa. Cold and detached. And cold. And _detached_, Godssake.'_

"Yeah, I can do that" she found herself answering quietly, while taking - cautiously - the tie from his hand.

'_Both mad. Maybe we're just both psychos. With _serious _mental issues'  
_The sensation of Sephiroth's hand clenching her throat flashed in her mind. He had been violent - but she had been violent, too. This time _she _had been the one to begin.  
'_But it has been _his _fault - showing up like a ghost and sparring my blow.'_

"I would appreciated it, if you finished this task in a little less than a _hour_, Lockhart"  
With that cutting remark, he definitely approached her.

The room disappeared from in front of her. All she could see now was his collarbone sticking out his white shirt inches from her nose.  
'_A bit less sexy - this would all be so much easier if he was a bit less _sexy'

"Your shirt is still unbuttoned." - yes, this time she had managed to speak. But she had been lucky, probably.

"Then button it"

Fucking shit - that _had _to be a joke. He was provoking her - so _deliberately _and _shamelessly_, but that was a detail, right?  
'_Cold. And detached.'_

There were only two buttons she had to do - they seemed like - a _hundred _buttons. She went for the first one, pathetically trying to close it keeping the fabric away from his skin - pulling it towards her a little more than common sense could suggest - she would have done anything not to _touch _him. The second one was a little more - problematic. The tight fabric didn't leave her much room between her fingers and his skin, and the idea of pulling it towards her had its reverse side - she pulled Sephiroth _himself _towards her, making his chin brush against her forehead, and his arm touch her side for a moment.  
When she looked up to him with an expression that reminded a panicked apology, she found his knowing smirk waiting.

"Be careful, Lockhart - I know it's you, and I can easily _sense _you're pulling all this stunt not to _touch _me - but, honestly - a lesser man might start to get - _ideas_" he even emphasised the last word by lowering his head a little.

'_Sonofabitchshitshitfuck'  
_He was having so _much _fun, wasn't he? He was joking with her - and she was going to _die _from a heart attack in that exact position if she heard another sentence like that one. What the hell was he trying to do? Just what the hell -

To end the embarrassing situation as soon as possible, Tifa finally made the black tie slide around his now buttoned collar. But it took her less than a second to understand that the troubles were just to begin. That position, it reminded her…

* * *

_After having to look at him pathetically for failing his attempt in nearly five minutes, Tifa burst out into laughter and reached him. She looked briefly at their reflection in the mirror - at the reflection of her hand touching automatically his arm._

"_You're laughing at me. You bitch." Cloud snatched away from his neck the tie he was trying to knot. "You will be punished." he used the tie as a rope, circling Tifa's waist and pulling her back to his chest. Her embarrassed laughter filled the deserted room. _

"_Say Cloudy boy - didn't your mum tell you how to knot a tie?" she continued mocking him, even if she was blushing heavily from their closeness._

"_Uh- maybe she did and I just forgot it. Have any other complaints?" he whispered in her ear. _

"_You're hopeless" she turned to face him, still trapped between him and the tie. "Give me. I'll do it for you."_

_Cloud let go of her and handed her the tie.  
_"_Let's see, miss I-know-it-all." he said in a challenging tone. _

_But in a few seconds Tifa's expert hands made a perfect knot on his collar.  
__"There. I always do this for my father, you know?"_

"_I'm impressed, actually" Cloud voice was halfway the mocking of before and sincere admiration. "So how should I pay my debt..?"_

_Tifa still had the tie in her fist.  
__It was a moment of pure madness. _

_She pulled Cloud towards her - and she _kissed _him. _

_And it was like - bang bang.  
__They were supposed to be childhood friends - especially - _he _had always thought they were supposed to be _just _childhood friends. And she felt like a _betrayer.

_Bang bang.  
__Tifa ran away as fast as she could - and she could run _very _fast._

_Cloud remained there completely dumfounded.  
_Bang bang. My baby shot me down.

_

* * *

_

Her fingers were frozen around the silky fabric of Sephiroth's neck tie - and there was no way to move them. She was not even embarrassed now - she was just completely _nostalgic_, with a terrible lump in her throat.  
'_I can't cry this way in front of him - oh _please _-'_

"May I ask what are you doing down there, my lady? Because as strange as it may sound, I'd dare say you're contemplating on my tie - I'm glad you had fun with such minor things - too bad I'm going to be late if you don't _hurry_"  
Sephiroth distracted her, raising her chin with his determined fingers, completely destroying her moment.

And she _would _have cried this time, if he hadn't been the cocky arrogant _impatient _person he was. But she just thanked he was this way. She was grateful that now the sensation of knotting the tie to _Cloud _had completely vanished. This had nothing to do with that time - absolutely nothing. _Cloud _was there that time - a young, blond boy with rebel hair, struggling to do a thing he was unable to do, not asking for her help because he still needed to prove himself he was a _man _- and that he could things by himself - even if they were as trivial as knotting a tie.

Now - now _who _was there in front of her?

Hell.  
The embodiment of perfection and self-confidence. That man who was so full of himself that he could ask her to knot his tie because he _couldn't _do it - and still he managed to be the winner of the challenge, for some obscure reason. Sephiroth had captured her eyes, and her fists had fallen down on his chest. Hell he was so helplessly _gorgeous_.  
The thought crossed her mind like a spectre - she still wanted to smash him against the wall now - she wanted to strangle him with his tie - but the _way _she _wanted _him in that moment - she wanted him _against _her so hard - that was a frightening _attraction_.

The depths of her crimson eyes betrayed her, and for a _moment _they gave that away - a moment which was enough - and in that moment, she had lost. Sephiroth noticed that _something _in her eyes - and a satisfied smirk appeared on his lips. It was just a vague sensation - a foreshadow of something - but it had been _unmistakably _there, for a fraction of second.

"I think you have _forgotten _how to knot a tie, Lockhart" he retorted devilishly.

That hit her - and she could not speak - she could do _fucking nothing_ - apart from blushing in a way that not even a fifteen years old girl could. But that was quite useless, to be honest, considering that the only way to escape from that _absurd _situation was to knot the damn tie.

"If the _difficulty _of my request is too much for an average woman like you, I suppose I could even give you a hint.." his sly voice promised nothing comforting.

When his hand took hers, she gaped, a rush of blood to her face - and to her brain.

'_Damn _hot _bastard- I -' _She could have sworn his thumb had caressed her knuckle in the process of knotting the tie – did it happen? Or was she just going helplessly crazy? _'He fucking _knows _how to knot it. He fucking _knows_-'_

'_He's so damn _hot_.'_

Here it was - her epiphany - in the worst moment it could have come. She unwillingly - completely _unwillingly _- squeezed his hand just a little _'Oh _hell'  
She quickly and nervously freed her hand from his.

"I _do _remember how to knot a tie" she seethed. Her voice was not trembling - but once again, it was a pure miracle.

He smiled bemused.  
"Good. I wouldn't have known anyway how to go on from that point"

He could be sincere - but Tifa felt so humiliated - and ridiculous - as she finished knotting his tie with anxious fingers.

At last, the torture was over. She moved away from him, and picked up the rag she had dropped when she had extracted the Wutainese sword. But he was not moving.  
"Good evening. Have fun at the reunion." she snapped, hoping that this would drive him away sooner.

"Good evening, Lockhart. It's always a pleasure exchanging _ideas _with you." he bowed his head a little, and then moved towards the door.

'_Finally'  
_Those _ideas _again. He was kidding her - and he was _enjoying _it.

"Why the fuck did you come _here _anyway?" her voice blocked him on the door. She didn't even want an answer probably - that was meant to be her last imprecation. After that, she could finish her work in peace.

But he _did _answer.  
"I was searching for _someone _who could knot my tie" he was calm. But that irritating smile wouldn't go away from his face.

Tifa chuckled.  
"In the _weapons' room_?" she shot with sarcastic voice, rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

"Maybe I didn't explain myself. _You _were supposed to be that someone from the very first moment, Lockhart" Sephiroth threw the words there, and then he left the room.

Bang bang.

**End of Chapter 7**

**

* * *

**

**Author'sNotes:** Oh my.. it's been so long.. I'm not even sure someone is still out there reading! Lol.. Well I apologise for the lack of update.. but now here is the chapter.. the last normal chapter of the story.. and in the next one the madness will officially begin!  
I want to tank you three special people out there: Hypatia - for kicking my lazy ass with your reviews-, Sodacolapop - your comments and rearrangements of this chapter were lovely -, and last but not least Amaranthos - you can't imagine how much I appreciated your support during this months, and your will to beta the chapter.  
AND THANK YOU TO ALL MY READERS!  
As Always I can't wait to read what did you think about this!  
So, see you the next chapter - oh, and if some of you have a myspace, you should definitely go ahead and add me.. I love to chat with FF lovers!

Swamp-Eyes

PS: Check out the wonderful page that Amaranthos has done for me.. it has also a pic inspired by Subeservience! I always think that the chica overestimates me, but ehy, she has done such a touching work that I just have to show everyone! Thanks Stacey you are the best!

http/www(dot)geocities(dot)com/tifansephiroth/msswampeyes(dot)html

**4/11**

Edited, thanks to Aqua Phoenix. I know it took me a while ;)  
Right link: (whole Stacey's site, and not only my page)

www(dot)geocities(dot)com/tifansephiroth/SEPHIROTH(underscore)AND(underscore)TIFA(underscore)MAINPAGE(dot)html


	8. The Final Cut

**Subservience **

* * *

**Chapter 8  
****The final cut**

* * *

_What is forgiveness?  
__It's just a dream.  
__What is forgiveness?  
__It's everything. _

_(…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead)_

* * *

"So, Professor Hojo - I mean, your _father _- has already told you about his idea of sending you and your troops off into Corel desert, for that - _monster_." Scarlet was sitting on Sephiroth's black leather sofa, with her legs crossed and a cup of black coffee in her hand.  
She was wearing a less scandalous dress than the one she had been wearing at the party - the crimson one with that never-ending split - but it was still a breathtaking dress, which didn't even reach down to half of her thighs. She was drawing circles in the air with her tip-toe - her toe nails were no less perfect that the fingernails were, and her high heeled sandals were doing their job by revealing them. 

"Actually, he has. That ruby monster seems to be his main concern right now - he cares about it even more than he does about those Wutainese rebel cells." Sephiroth, a severe expression worn, was sitting on the sofa not far from Scarlet.

They were in the so called 'glass room'- almost everything there was made of glass or crystal, even. The small coffee tables, some chairs, all the counters and the cupboards. Not to mention the innumerable glass trinkets lying on every free surface. The room had been Aeris' idea, and Scarlet, being a woman who liked all that shines, always wanted to be received there. Cleaning it was one of the most boring things in the world - plus, Aeris used to feel depressed every time a maid accidentally dropped one of those little statues- but then she was far too kind to actually reproach her.

"Of course he does - some scientists say that there might be extractable Mako in the southern part of the Corel desert. But with that thing around, they can't find someone whose imbecile enough to build up a Mako plant there." Scarlet smiled wickedly.

Sephiroth smiled too; when it came to those kinds of things, it was always a pleasure talking with Scarlet. The woman had an engine in her brain - she always seemed to understand what was going on in every ShinRa's man's mind - maybe even in his own.

"..and he wants me to kill it. He wants me to kill the Ruby Weapon, that's its name, right?"

"Sephiroth, listen." Scarlet ran a hand through her platinum straight hair, curving her crimson red lips just a little "I know you're the embodiment of power - but I _wouldn't _suggest you go for it. I mean - I'm not sure that monster is just a huge useless mass of flesh waiting to be stabbed. I've heard many other scientists talking about it in different terms."

If that hadn't been Scarlet - the epitome of indifference for the people who surrounded her - he would have thought she was worried. But since that _was _Scarlet, Sephiroth's brains were already urging to find all the possible political implications of fighting or not fighting that damn ancestral monster. He decided to tease her, anyway.

"Since when do you care about me?"

Every other woman could have died by his subtle smile in that moment.  
But, once again, that _was_ Scarlet - and she replied with an equally killer smile.

"I didn't want to be blunt - but here it is. If you _die_, Sephiroth, so many troubles would be born in ShinRa's higher ranks that I would be condemned to become a mad woman."

Sephiroth's look remained blank for a while.  
'_Dying..?'  
_Now that surely came unexpected. Not even during the war people dared to say one of all those dangerous missions he had to attend could expose him to the risk of dying. A smirk escaped his lips.

"Don't be silly, Scarlet.." he rolled his eyes. He was acting as if he was actually immortal.

But Scarlet stood up suddenly in front of him, her thin smooth legs across his eyes.  
"I tell you Hojo is underestimating that monster. No offence, but your father is just as freaky Mako obsessed - he would do anything to obtain that thing - even _sacrifice _his only son."

Sephiroth laughed arrogantly.  
"I think that _you_ are underestimating _me_."

But actually there was a part of truth in her words. Hojo would have sacrificed him for _anything_, since he didn't even care about him, if not as one could care about a lifeless weapon. He would have used him until he had become useless - and then, just a farewell with no tears would have followed. That was why, Mako or not, Ruby Weapon or not, this was just nothing new to him. The only thing that he found irritating was that Scarlet was talking about that mission as if it was something far above his grip.

'_As if I could die because of a stupid monster..'_

"No, Seph." she shook her head. "You're mistaking my words this time. And you will _make _a mistake if you let your father convince you to-"

She didn't have the time to finish her sentence. Sephiroth stood up with a snort, facing her - there was just coldness and wit on his face.  
"_Stop _this. None has to convince me, Scarlet. I act on my own will - and I hope you will remember this."

But on Scarlet's prominent lips there was still a doubtful smirk.  
"I hope you're right, dear General. I was just trying to be _rational _in here. But don't worry - you are even too famous for being your own master."

In that precise moment, Scarlet's hand reached Sephiroth arm, while his eyes locked on her breast.  
_'Her fault, wearing this _shameless _dress..' _he almost smirked, driving his eyes away. Not that seeing Scarlet's décolleté was something that could really move him, by the way.  
They were still standing there, when Aeris made her entrance.

Sephiroth frowned a little.  
She usually never disturbed him while he was working - but _breaking in _like that - that was different - and she had never - never _ever _- interrupted him while he was right in the middle of a conversation with someone from ShinRa highs. She always tried to be on her own - never interfering with official matters. He had always had the suspect she didn't think she was smart enough for that kind of thing. Or maybe she was just not interested.

But here she was.  
And she didn't look like she meant to be official, that was for sure.

She was barefoot, wearing a long satin pink dress which resembled a night gown, her hair loose and even more straight than usual was sliding on her nude shoulders, her arms just falling along her sides. But what was more surprising about her, was her expression.  
It was the expression of a kamikaze. It was the expression of a soldier the very moment before he was going to shoot flawlessly at his enemy. It was the expression which seemed to be yelling 'War'. War. War.

He had never - once again, never _ever_ - seen her face disfigured by such hate. He had never seen that Aeris. That Aeris was different - that Aeris wanted _war _- and it was becoming more and more plain who was the _enemy_.

Sephiroth was the enemy.  
And if a woman could have ever _scared _Sephiroth, that was the moment, and Aeris was that woman - or better, that _ghost _of what Aeris used to be was that woman.

She didn't even greet Scarlet - she completely _ignored _her, as if she and Sephiroth were alone in the room.

"Hi."  
Her voice was a low, tensed squeal. She bit her lips as soon as she finished speaking - it looked like she would have exploded otherwise.

Unwisely, Sephiroth chose to disregard all those hints to the upcoming catastrophe, and spoke coldly to her.  
"Aeris. Scarlet and I are having a pretty much important discussion about work right now. Could we talk this evening, or do you think I'm asking too much?" he turned back to Scarlet, giving her a half-apologetic expression, not that he really needed to apologize for something, - without even waiting for Aeris' answer. He had liquidated her this way so many times that he just couldn't imagine that the girl would have been able to do something different than actually obeying him.

That was why her reply knocked him off his feet.

"I think you're asking too much."  
There was _sarcasm _in her voice - and sarcasm in that sweet girl's voice was pure paradox.

So finally the declaration of war had officially come - unmistakably, it was impossible to just not pay attention to the situation like the other times - now there was only one way - only one thing they both could do - they both _had _to do.

To fight.

Sephiroth looked at the blonde beside him; she was scanning Aeris with interest.  
"Scarlet. I shall call you tomorrow so maybe we can finish our debate." he said icily to her. He touched her shoulder unnoticeably - just to drive her on the way to the door.

That was when his first, _real _cold shower of the day came.  
Aeris's foot reached the small table with a speed he had never imagined she could possess, and she threw it completely upside down, the glass breaking, the little cups smashing, the black coffee splashing violently on the white tiles.

"_DON'T TOUCH HER_! DON'T FUCKING _TOUCH _HER!"  
Her voice had been high and shrill at the point of making it difficult to discern her words.

The time stopped - there were no words to describe Sephiroth's complete and utter amazement. Aeris yelling - Aeris _cursing_. That was impossible - and he felt like his mouth had been sealed by a spell. That was not Aeris.. that was not the Aeris he knew.

Scarlet, with an awkward smile, and an almost sympathetic expression depicted on her lips, raised her hand for a second. She was looking at Aeris as if she pitied her.  
"Mh- Well, maybe I just happen to be here at the wrong ti-"

"You! You shut the hell _up_, bitch! Bitch bitch _bitch_!" cruel and sadistic, her words were literally exploding out. "You know what! _You _are the one here who needs pity, not me! You! A woman who has made career just by giving _blowjobs _to the whole of ShinRa! So save that look for _yourself_, Scarlet!"

Not that it was something Scarlet have never heard about - that kind of rumours about her - it had been the first time that someone was yelling it into her face so shamelessly. And considering that the person doing that was considered one of the most polite and kind woman in that corrupted society was surely mind-blowing. Even on Sephiroth's face she could notice a hint of a smile – knowing it to be one of _her _own remarks. It was definitely not supposed to be one of _Aeris'_.

Sephiroth was staring at his girl for what seemed like the first time. What was that? Was he just imagining that? Hadn't he been craving for Aeris to show her real thoughts since - _forever_?  
'_But I didn't even consider her able to _think _such things-'  
_How many times? How many times he had seen Aeris just submitting - and he - he himself had thought - _Why doesn't she just get angry? Why? - _and she never did. She kept smiling that sad way. She cried. But she _never _got angry.  
She never was like Tifa - she never was a rebel soul. There was nothing that needed to be dominated in her, nothing that gave him troubles, nothing that could catch his attention - no challenges, no nothing. _Boring _- that was the most suitable word he could find to describe Aeris.

But now -oh, now there was nothing boring in that girl who, not satisfied enough with having turned upside down the glass coffee table, was launching herself wildly on one of the shelves with all her little crystals sculptures flawlessly disposed on its surface. In a move, she swept _all _of them away, making them fly even meters away.  
The sound of shattered glass filled the room, piecing Sephiroth's mind, but leaving Aeris apparently untouched.

As soon as she noticed that Aeris was aiming at the nearest shelf, Sephiroth boosted to reach her, shoving away Scarlet - who was standing in the way, admiring half enchanted all that repressed violence which was exploding out. When he reached her, his arm latched firmly around her waist, making her back collide to his chest.  
He needed her to be under his control - he couldn't stand seeing her acting so wildly, like a subversive fiend. That was _Aeris_, after all. But on the other hand, a part of him still wanted to be knocked out for the surprise - like a few minutes ago – with still wanting to find something different and _interesting _in all this.

"Aeris, please, be reasonable."  
His voice was deep but still calm. He was speaking in the crook of her neck, hoping that physical contact could soothe her, and his fingers were sliding down her arm searching for her hand.  
There was a strange passion in all that.

Aeris' body, which usually sort of melted under his touch, this time _rejected _him fiercely - _struggled _against his closeness. She elbowed the wall of his abdomen - turning angrily to him, and he had to catch her arm to prevent her from stepping back any further.

Brown overgrown locks were covering one of her brilliant emerald eyes - the other one was locked to Sephiroth's fingers on her arm, looking _disgusted_. She had such angry eyes - such passionate eyes. Then, those pale lips, that fiery grimace, that bony arm, who made him feel as if he was about to break it with his grip.

'_She is like Tifa'  
_It was then he understood why recently he had such a disturbing deja-vù sensation while dealing with Aeris.  
A copy of that Lockhart girl. _A copy_.  
There had been the excessive thinness first, followed by the hairstyle. Finally, even the same behaviour.  
'_Why?-'  
_Sephiroth was now completely disappointed and confused.

"Why?"  
He asked hotly to Aeris, not realizing that the question was completely out of the blue and that was resulting cryptic to everyone who could not read his mind.

But Aeris _could _read his mind - and still, she pretended she couldn't, and just slapped his hand away - to then slap _him _away.  
"No not any more Sephiroth!" she cried out furiously. But she was not crying. And she would not have cried this time. "Not any more." she repeated more flatly, shaking softly her head. Her eyes were staring into nothingness, and the red of the setting sun was starting to tingle the pink satin of her dress. She was a beautiful broken doll. Suddenly, the rage that she had managed to suffocate for a few instants surged again-- "And you dare ask why! You dare ask _why_!"

She finally reached the next shelf, grabbed the biggest statue on it - a wonderfully made rearing unicorn - and threw it towards Sephiroth. Of course he dodged it, but the unicorn burst out into pieces at the foot of the sofa.

"Aeris, you're acting like a child!"  
Sephiroth tried again to reach her - his brain struggling to find a way to calm her down. But for the first time, he was feeling powerless in front of her.  
'_Hell - I _can't _stop her.'_

But, once again, did he _really _want to stop her?

Aeris, stepping unconsciously on the broken shards, was slowly cutting the palm of her feet.  
"You make me sick! Sick of you - and sick of _myself_. I hate myself because of you - do you even realize that? I hated the part of me which just submitted - which kept erasing herself without reacting - and now I hate the part of me which pulls out this _shit _just to get your _attention _Sephiroth! I am such a deplorable person! Everything I do, it's not wrong - and I can feel it."

Sephiroth paused for few seconds, trying to digest her words. He pressed his hand on his forehead - but it all was too stunning, and his coldness seemed pathetically futile to solve that situation. Still, he was unable to pull something different out of himself.  
"You look so out of _yourself _right now." he just replied icily, giving momentarily his back to her.  
He had not even bothered to tell her something about her monologue about herself - and he knew that ignoring it was a hazardous move.

"_YES_! And I bet you _like _it, you _psycho_!" for the second time, Aeris raised her voice so much that he had to concentrate to understand what she was saying.

Surely, it was something amazing and extremely clever, which made him freeze in his position. Was that supposed to be an ultimate synthesis of his personality?  
Because _yes_. Actually - _actually _a part of him was about to yell 'Yes, I like it!'.  
'_But from her lips - from _those _lips-'_

The crash of glass smashing reached him again - she had destroyed another shelf - and all her trinkets.. That was- worse than the shooting guns - worse than the clench of metal against metal. That rumour was worse.

'_Why?'_

He was unable to turn back. He was unable to face her - because he felt there was something completely decaying and _heartbreaking _in the image of the girl - of _his _girl - breaking down her own objects - breaking with no return on something she liked so much. All he could do - and especially wanted to do, was act like a stranger.  
They were two strangers again to each other, now. And every breaking little statue made them even more stranger – tore them apart.

But yet, he was not sorry.

When he realised that the piercing noise of the glass smashing was not stopping, it became plain to him that what Aeris was doing was _systematic_. She wouldn't have stopped until not even one of those gracious sculptures hadn't been smashed into smithereens.  
'_She can do that. She can do that if that's what she wants. I surely won't try to _stop _her.'_

But surely he wasn't _understanding _her - he had always labeled Aeris like a flat, _in love _girl. He had never even thought that there _might have been _something to understand about her.

A brief pause of silence followed after several minutes of deafening rumours. A significant amount of curious people had gathered on the threshold, attracted by the mess, but none had had the guts to interfere with the couple. They were all staring at them as if they were two actors on a set.

Finally, Aeris reached Sephiroth, and then threw him down on the sofa, kneeling on him. Sephiroth let her do as she felt, thinking that his lack of reaction was eventually going to calm her. But he was wrong – so very wrong.

She was panting, and her long brown hair was now messy while falling on her trembling shoulders. She had some light cuts on her hands, and was dirtying Sephiroth's cheeks with her fingers.

He, on the other hand, had been deserted by the overwhelming surprise he had felt earlier, and his usual sensation of supremacy had returned shooting up his veins. One of his long, silver locks was reaching down to the floor, lying on one of the countless glass shards. A solitary sun ray made it glow insidiously.

"Are you done now?" he asked. He had a smirk on his face - a smirk of one who had overall enjoyed the spectacle, but now was going to restore the previous order - a smirk of one who felt victorious even without having done a single thing.

Funny thing was, Aeris had the same disconcerting smirk on her face.  
"_We_ are done, Sephiroth." she wasn't yelling anymore. "Because you're not sorry - and you will never be. I can read it on your face. And I will be never able to forgive you - I will never be able to forgive myself"

He was not sorry - that was true.  
He didn't repent a single action. He wouldn't have changed a single thing in his past to prevent this beautiful woman who was now kneeling on his chest from going away from him.  
_°Because you're not sorry - and you will never be.°  
_His pride couldn't be scratched - especially, a woman could never scratch it.

"If that is what you desire, Aeris, let's do it. Let's split up."

The words were like liquid ice injected into her veins. Because in the end he had won - _he _had said it first, and not _her_. And the way he had said it - as if it was just routine - as if it was something worthless.  
_That_ really made her mad - that made her cruel. And this time, following his example, it was cold, calculated cruelness.

She lowered her head on his - and their looks were locked in what was the epic ending of their battle.  
"Fine, Sephiroth. Let's split up." she whispered into his ear. Her hand ran through his hair for the last time, pulling softly the lock which reached the ground. "This is _farewell_, I guess." she brushed her lips against his, in a butterfly kiss.

He did it. He _did _mistake it for a farewell kiss.  
He didn't notice the clinging of the shards on the tiles.

She immediately broke the kiss, and rose up again on him - the sunset made her eyes burn. She pulled Sephiroth's thick lock with her blood stained left hand towards her, every single hair perfectly tensed.

"I hope you will learn something from me Seph. I hope I can teach you what _humiliation _is." her own sadistic smile was far more frightening than all the ones she had received from Sephiroth during their life together - but it was accompanied by a sort of sadness.

What Sephiroth saw in that moment, was the sharp edge of the shimmering piece of glass Aeris was holding in her right hand grazing his silver lock.

---

Tifa was standing there, surrounded just by the utter silence of the palace. The striking sensation she felt was definite - she felt as if she was standing in the middle of a battle field - _after _the battle had taken place.

And - surely - it must have been a _destructive_ battle.

A thousands smithereens were covering almost the whole floor of the room - there were just a few isolated areas where there wasn't any piece of crystal shining into the moonlight.  
It was literally a shards-inferno, and she couldn't move without shattering even more of the remnants of the glass statues. Without knowing why, her chest was being seized by an intense angst.

'_In every battle there is a winner and a loser.'_

She wanted to get out of here - what the _fuck _had happened? - she wondered.  
But deep in her heart, she just knew everything.

"Tifa!" Jocelyne entered the room with a panicked expression, but then stopped on the threshold, stepping back not to walk on the shattered glass. She was calling her with a suffocated voice, trying to keep it as low as she could "Tifa, you should get out of here. No one is allowed to enter this room for now.. Oh my - it has been terrible - where were you?"

But the black haired girl didn't move - she kept standing there like a ghost, trying to imagine the dynamics of the event she had missed - but she was hopelessly blank minded - and unjustifiably _scared_.

"Jo. What happened?" she asked. But she dreaded the answer.

Suddenly, even if Jocelyne had started speaking, Tifa was not listening already - her eyes had been caught by something gliding in a way which was different from the way every single shard did. That something was gliding in a _unique _way.  
Tifa started stepping on the smithereens, completely uncaring about fracturing them now.  
She bent down when she reached the sofa, and took in her hand something completely shocking and unexpected: she was holding a considerably large amount of Sephiroth's silver hair - a lock which was at least 30 centimetres long.

Her heart stopped.

'_In every battle there is a winner and a _loser _- and not always the loser is the one you would expect.'_

_---_

She was not prepared.

No matter how hard she had tried to visualize it - to actually form a mental image by trying to remove that disturbing lock she had seen from Sephiroth - it was impossible. Sephiroth was Sephiroth - he was the legendary long-haired general - no way that could change. She hadn't succeeded; the Sephiroth she used to know kept popping into her head, with long silver hair covering both sides of his face.

That was why she was _not_ prepared for what she was going to see.  
Worrying thing, too, was that she was so _anxious _for unknown reasons. When she was about to open that door her heart was bumping like mad - her hands were trembling, as if she already knew that in that room she would have seen something shocking-  
'_What are you so scared about? What?'  
_She didn't care about Sephiroth - but was it possible that someone she didn't care about could move her so much?

'_The falling myth. That is scary. The _unknown -_. Just that'  
_And she didn't know what she would confront - she didn't know what kind of Sephiroth was awaiting beyond that door.  
'_I want him to be the usual uncaring bastard he is! I want him to treat me like shit - God I don't want him in any _different _way - I want _him!'

She realised she would have just never gotten prepared. Every minute she waited, she was getting less and less prepared. And more and more _concerned_.

She opened the door- oh no she was not _prepared_.

Sephiroth was standing there, looking at his own image in the mirror, a hand leaning on the sink, his lips slightly parted - and, despite all, the most noble and ascetic expression she had ever seen on his face. The entire left side of his face - the side she was seeing now - was almost completely exposed, his ear was exposed, his sharp jaw was exposed, and finally part of his neck - everything, _everything _was so exposed - she could have even seen the tensed nerve running under his pale skin down to his collarbone.

He was shirtless, he was barefoot. He _was _wearing his black leather thigh pants, there _was _the rest of his hair reaching his lower back - she didn't know why she had a feeling he was completely _naked_?  
'_Can really - really a simple missing lock change a person_ so _much?'  
_Yes, it could - and they both knew it. When they looked at each other, he was hell angry - and she was hell sorry. She was sorry, and she could not control it.

'_Say something harsh. Say something _harsh_ - and I will feel better'_

"You're not allowed here Lockhart. I'll give you three seconds to get out of my sight." his hiss was merciless and void from any kind of gentleness.

She had almost forgotten that Sephiroth could be like that - she had almost forgotten Sephiroth _was _like that. Just because he had treated her like a human being a few times, she had fallen like any other stupid girl could have done - like _Aeris _had done.  
'_But Aeris has won her battle this evening.. When will _you _be able to win your own?'  
_She was not going to win tonight. Not even tonight. She had lost already when she had started running to come and see Sephiroth - that urge she had felt to see him had been a total failure.

She didn't reply to him. But she didn't get out of his sight, either, even if he was clearly glaring at her expectantly.

The three seconds he had given her were abundantly over, and their mute exchange of looks was at its apex.

When she finally let her eyes drop from his face, she noticed that Sephiroth was holding a pair of scissors in his left hand. Almost panicking, she instantly checked the floor at his feet - no hair yet.Involuntarily, she sighed with relief.

And at her gesture, he - if possible - got even more irritated. He let the scissors fall on the white tiles - and he gave in.  
"Fine then. Close the door."

An order.  
She obeyed.  
And she was happy - she was stupidly _happy _that all she had to do now was just obey without thinking. Because thinking was rather painful tonight.  
'_I don't care anymore if he insults me. But I want him to be-'_

"What do you _want_, Lockhart? We are both aware that your presence here is not required - and out of place."

She remained silent.  
All she could think about were those shining shards - all the broken things. Sephiroth's lock, and that pair of scissors.  
There was no way of getting bored with watching Sephiroth now irregular hair, long on the right, short on the left. And even with that hairstyle, he was not ridiculous. Even with that hairstyle, he was-

"Whatever." he scolded  
There _was _a sort of tension in his voice, but he had resigned. Maybe he didn't want her, but he didn't have the will to struggle against her stubborness, this night. But he could be vice-versa. Maybe he _did_ want her, and didn't want to struggle against his _own_ stubborness.

Her throat was burning, and she still couldn't answer.  
'_Why am I so sorry that he has _lost _- why am I so _sorry_-'_

"I wanted to _see_ you." she finally spoke. And her voice had sounded so helplessly sweet - so helplessly near.

In every battle there is a winner and a loser.  
And when the loser is not the one you would have expected, no matter how much you can hate him, sometimes you just can't get over it.  
Because seeing things going always the same way was reassuring - while seeing Sephiroth trying to have his hair cut, alone in a bathroom, was something absolutely confusing.  
She was just not prepared.

"Why are you making that face?"  
Harsh, harsh - hell harsh - but paradoxically reassuring. Sephiroth's eyes were narrower than ever, and his fingers were clenched on the porcelain border of the sink. He was analysing her. Finally, he snorted, as if he had given up understanding why she was there - why she wanted to see him.

And actually, Tifa wondered, _why _was she making that face?

It happened suddenly, but naturally and imperceptibly. He _allowed _her to see part of his weakness - because yes, he could appear strong even in such a situation - but he actually didn't really care to do so in that moment. It was something almost invisible - his eyebrows' curve changing slightly, the nerve on his neck disappearing underneath his skin.

He looked at her as if they were on the same level, and it was a brief, amazing instant.

"Do this for me Lockhart. Do this, or leave. You're useless if you just stand there."

She looked back at him in a desperate search for further explanations, while running her hand trough her hair, as if showing her face could lessen the distance between them.  
"Do what?" her voice was an ungraceful squeak.  
'_God, I can't cry again.'  
_Once again, where was all her strenght? Where was all the stability she had fought hard to regain?

He rolled his eyes, showing plainly that his patience was even littler than usual this evening. He bent down, picking up the scissors, while looking at Lockhart - looking at the pair of scissors with pure terror; yes, it was exactly what she had feared.  
"Do _this_. It seems that I myself am unable."

But she stepped back, her back on the door again.  
"You're kidding. I can't do that Sephiroth."  
She laughed nervously, driving her hair away from her face again. Like so many other times, her expression was an incoherent mixture of feelings.

Sephiroth was handing the scissors to her now, his arm extended in the whiteness of the bathroom.  
"Remember who you are Lockhart. I'm not asking you a favour - this is an _order_. Take it or _leave_."

She could not leave, and she already knew it. Nothing could drive her out of that bathroom - nothing in that moment. So, still against her own will she was forced to choose the only path left, and while her lips started to tremble she bit the lower one; she was shaking her head helplessly, eyes wide open, mutely begging him _'no, please, don't make me - _don't-'

Her prayer was probably heard - but unfulfilled; his look didn't leave a single chance of turning back.

The tips of her unsure fingers were inches from the scissors, when he suddenly made them roll around his thumb with a swift gesture, until their blades clenched against each other, cutting the air.

"Just be careful with weapons, kid." in those words it seemed that all his old cockiness and sarcasm had returned.

After that, for a second she believed she was feeling better. But the sensation quickly faded.  
Her eyes were intensely drawn to the exposed side of his face, to that hint of a smile he had - and her hand was drawn to the scissors. She finally put her fingers in the free scissors' hole, and repeated his gesture with his same arrogance, making the scissors snap right inches from his shorter lock.  
"I'll try to."

But when her eyes fell on their image in the mirror, she surrendered. There was something hell wrong, and it was growing stronger. She was not going to be able to handle it forever. She was not going to be able to hand it even for just a little _longer_.

Then, abruptly, she forced her eyes away from the mirror reflection, and rushed her hands towards his hair, pulling wildly one of his longer locks, a cruel and almost killer expression depicted on her face. The scissors slashed it rapidly, and she thought she could hear the sound of every single hair being cut - and it hit her mind like the sound of a machine-gun.

But when the lock was finally separated from Sephiroth's, she almost screamed in panic, instantly letting it drop like it was bruising her.  
The lock fell on the ground like a dead leaf.

What happened next was a total case of chaos of action and reaction.  
Tifa was screaming and crying the hell out when she launched the scissors behind her, and she didn't even hear the noise of something breaking, for the buzz in her head was louder. She ran to the door, opening it.

The next second the door was slammed closed again by Sephiroth, who encaged her between him and the door.

First she kicked the door, but as soon as she realised it was useless, she jerked back against Sephiroth, elbowing him.  
"Go away you bastard!"  
She pushed him away violently - and he was _smiling _now.

He bent down to pick up the scissors for the second time, but in the moment Lockhart attacked him again, pushing him with his back on the cold tiles. Her sharp knees were pressing on both his sides, and her hands were touching him just where they happen to be.

And then - no. That was definitely not a kiss - it wasn't. She _didn't _kiss him. What she did was different - what she did was mad. With the eyes of a sanguinary fiend she _bit _his lower lips. She bit him violently, until she felt the flesh of his soft lip slicing under her teeth - until she could feel the irony taste of his blood on the tip of her tongue. In the meanwhile her hand pulled his locks, which slipped out of her fingers so unnaturally _soon_, and the tip of her nose was touching his cheek.

That was all her body striding with her mind could create. But where was her heart? Where was her _heart_? Wasn't it supposed to be even more important than body and mind?  
'_I like him. But he is such a-'  
_When she drew back, she couldn't believe she had done such a thing. And that he had _let _her do such a thing.  
'_Why doesn't he beat me? Why doesn't he _kill _me now?'_

Sephiroth was there, under her, vivid crimson blood spilling out his lip, a diagonal darker chop running through it. He looked tired and interested at the same time, while he was shaking his head and licking the blood away from his lip in disbelief.

Her eyes were fixed on the dark cut - in the instants which followed, the red blood came out again, and she was fascinated by the sight of the crimson stain getting bigger.  
'I _have done this. It's_ my _fault if he's bleeding now'_

Then, Sephiroth wielded the scissors in front of her again.  
"I don't want to _play _anymore tonight, Lockhart. Plus, it is highly impolite, not to finish what you have started."

Playing.  
She had bit him, she had screamed, she had cried - and for, it was all _play_? What could have happened, just a few hours ago, which was so grave to make everything else appear just a useless play to him?  
'_Aeris. Aeris. So he _did _care. Or he didn't--'  
_Unreadable, bastard, _unforgivable_.  
And she had kissed him. She had played with him.

She was not crying anymore, when she finally took the scissors from his hand again. They held them together of an inexcusably long time - they held them together while he raised his back from the floor-tiles.

They both turned to the big mirror, but this time they were _not _looking at their own reflection - they were looking at each other's.  
Near, near.  
Tifa saw it in the mirror. Tifa saw him turning to her, and looking at her directly, saw his perfect profile matched with that now absurd hair. But she didn't- couldn't turn to him. She preferred watching him watching her, as if they were two actors on a television-screen.  
She would have paid millions to know what he was thinking in that moment, but once again, she had nothing. And that was just impossible.

When she turned away from the mirror, her eyes fell on his forehead. She was higher than him, in that position. He was still sitting, and she was still kneeling.  
He adjusted his legs in a way which resembled the lotus' position.

Tifa's free hand was running pointlessly through his hair - she was not afraid of touching him anymore. But she still was afraid - because now she _couldn't help_ touching him.

She cut one of his locks, and looked away from it while it gracefully reached a white tile. She could feel her eyes filling up with tears again.

She felt as if she was destroying him - and, despite all, she could not even get the satisfaction of _vengeance _in all that.

His hair was still strangely irregular, but she was begging he was okay with that. There had been just those _three _drastic cuts - Aeris's, her own, and this last one - but his hair didn't even reach his shoulder anymore.  
'_Please make me stop.'_

The exact opposite order came immediately.

"_Shorter_."  
His voice was determined and calm now.

For all the following minutes, Tifa fell in a sort of trance. She kept cutting his hair like a lifeless machine - but she always was on the point of crying - and each and every one of his 'shorter cuts' was like a stab in her heart - and they were _many_. She kept cutting his hair until there was nothing more long, wavy and shimmering on his head - just short, spiky, casual locks. Cutting until she could see his nape, and his nerves running down to his back, his vertebras sticking out in a straight line through his back. Cutting until there was practically nothing covering his ears anymore. He was mute now, but, at that point, she had understood.

She couldn't calculate how many times had passed since she had cut Sephiroth first lock. But now, she felt they were done. She put delicately the scissors on the floor, among those endless hairs - long locks, short locks, darker and lighter silver all mixed together under the neon light.

While Sephiroth was standing up, she realised she still hadn't looked at him directly in his face - she realised she still hadn't seen the new Sephiroth.  
Her knees were hurting from the over-long permanence in that position, and her previous incontrollable sadness was catching her again. She noticed that she was crying again just because bitter tears snaked into the corner of her mouth.  
She hated him. She hated him as if he was the only one guilty for what she was feeling.

Sephiroth grabbed her wrist, and pulled her back to her feet.

She didn't offer any resistance to this - but she still childishly kept her head low not to look at him, even when she found herself with her back to the wall. She tried to concentrate on his toned abdominal muscles, on the silver hairs running from his navel to the metal button of his trousers.  
But the image of that devastated room - of those shattered, sad smithereens kept coming back to her.  
'_I feel so bad-'  
_Before she could realize it, she was crying loudly again, and she had involuntarily planted both her hands on his bare chest.

"I don't want to be the one who has to clean that room - I don't want to be _the _one.. I have no fault.. I have _no fault_.. So don't make m-"

Sephiroth's soft and exhausted laugh interrupted her.  
One of his hands landed on the wall beside her head, while the other one caught one of hers, holding it still close to his chest. He leaned towards her, and his lips reached her temple. She felt something warm and liquid on her skin at his gesture.

"Don't worry. You won't be that one."

Saying that she was embarrassed was nothing but a bland euphemism.  
This time they were close, and there wasn't a plausible reason to justify that - there wasn't a plausible reason which could justify her actual closeness to the destroyer of her entire family, of her entire life. She could never have _forgiven_ him - and forgiveness was everything. But she couldn't help feeling that way, too.

Something was oozing down the side of her face, tickling her. She reached for it, and felt that warmth again. She looked at her own fingers - they were blood-tingled.  
'_Sephiroth's' _

At last, she raised her head.

The change Sephiroth had passed through was utterly shocking. His cheekbones seemed sharper, his mouth seemed bigger in the face which for the first time was revealed in all its thinness. His lower lip was still dirty with blood - the same blood she had on her temple now - and the red liquid had flooded down to his chin. Tifa's hand were exploring him as if he was _hers_, one following his beautiful jaw line, the other one running through his messy spiky hair, which left even the biggest part of his forehead in sight, but fell casually on it here and there.  
He looked like an _elf _- and yet he looked more manly at the same time.

The old Sephiroth seemed to have disappeared from her mind; she could see only _him _now. This unforgivable man.

"So how do you think I look, Lockhart?"  
A cocky, overconfident smirk.  
But he was allowed to do that - he was allowed to do anything to her, as long as she was his slave.

"You look gorgeous."

She was not lying. No.  
It had escaped her lips with such easiness that it made her suspect violently - for the first time - that she really _was _falling in love.  
In that case, _she_ would have been the _unforgivable _one, and not him.

* * *

**Author'sNote**. Over-long wait. But here it is, finally. I'm determined to finish this story, and, really, the end is near. Two more chapters I think. Oh, and I just know - know that you all want to kill me because of Sephiroth's air but _hey_ - it was planned by the very beginning, and this is my story, that's all. Yes I did it, so sue me.  
THANKS: Stacey aka Amaranthos, betareader and friend. Check out her beautiful TifaSeph site, it even has my art of Seph's new hair on  
http://www(dot)geocities(dot)com/tifansephiroth/black(underscore)subservience(dot)html  
Aqua Phoenix1: thanks for your further corrections, and for all your in-depht reviews D  
Readers: I can't believe how many of you has written to me during all this months to get this update. Well, you all can say you have gained this, so enjoy! And let me know what do you think about the latest story's dynamics...

Swamp-Eyes


	9. Human, all too human

**Subservience **

* * *

**Chapter 9  
****Human, all-too-human.**

* * *

_Please bleed  
So I know that you are real  
So I know that you can feel  
The damage that you've done  
_

_(Ben Harper)_

* * *

Sephiroth _didn't _like Tifa Lockhart.

He had radically disliked her from the very first moment he had seen her crawling and mud-covered on his white floor, and then he had disliked her even more when she had showed him her rebel crimson eyes, when she had started spitting poisonous words to him, when she had reacted so wildly to his attacks - and, finally, he had disliked her when he had seen her flirting with his Lieutenant Zack, too.  
So there wasn't a single reason which could explain why it had been _her _- her of all people - her instead of _himself _- the one who had had the privilege of cutting his hair.

This was what Sephiroth was thinking about when, the day after the storm, he had woken up, startled slightly at the unexpected absence of his long hair. He was used to seeing his long silver locks falling on his shoulder as he sat up in his bed - and the _nothingness _of this morning was still too inexperienced to just be ignored by him. Though, it hadn't taken long for him to recall in his mind all the events of the previous night.

None - none except Lockhart - had seen him with his hair cut yet and at the moment he could care nothing the others had seen. Speaking of the others, most likely everyone knew that he had split up with Aeris. Everyone was probably talking about it - and dying to ask him something, to hear his personal take - but Lockhart hadn't even _hinted _it the previous night, as he would have expected.

'_Surely she likes being _different'

He threw the blankets aside, and stood up in the darkness of the room.  
He pushed a button on the wall beside him, and the automatic blinds started moving up slowly, while the sun was gradually filling the bedroom, snaking up his legs, and finally reaching the opposite wall.

Before the room could become completely bright, he noticed the red led light of the answer-phone blinking. That was his personal phone - and there were only _four _people in the whole Gea who were in possession of that number - President ShinRa, Zack, Aeris - and his father. Usually, none dared to call him there, unless they reckoned that what they had to say was _extremely _important - and that he himself could - and actually _would _- consider it important.  
The number glowing on the little black screen was a damn 5 - and he had checked it just yesterday morning.

His finger hesitated on the little button - disconcertingly, he realised he was fearing that one of those calls might be Aeris'. But the very second after, he realised that the girl _had _a dignity, and she would never have returned on her steps the very day after. So he clicked it.

**Bip.  
**_Good day Sephiroth. We need to arrange your mission in the Corel desert, as soon as possible. The issue is _essential_, so I would like you to take this seriously and call me _immediately _after you hear this. _

Hojo.

**Bip.  
**_It's been a few hours, and you're still unreachable. Your secretary is treating me as if I were just a _common _person. You should definitely fix this, son. _

Hojo.  
'_Screw you.'_

**Bip  
**_Holy shit man what the _fuck _has happened? Aeris came here _crying _and she's not even telling me what's the problem. Bet its your fault. Call back. _

Zack. His tone was more concerned and severe than ever - almost angry, he would dare.  
'_When it comes to his precious cousin..'_

**Bip.  
**_Seph. Call _the hell _back! I can't handle this, really. .. .. .. . Man you're such a bastard sometimes.. . . _Fucker_. .. Just _call

Zack again.

**Bip  
**_I've heard you had a few mh- _personal _problems. Though, a few hours have passed, so you shall be over it already. I'm awaiting you for the mission. That's all. _

Hojo, for the third and last time.

**Bip.**

That last message was the synthesis of what his father was expecting from him - problems should not even exist, in his life. Or if they really had to, he should be over it in a _few hours already_, to then launch himself in the Corel desert challenging a monster which would most likely rip him apart.

'_Aeris didn't call'_

That surprising thought, even if masked as a mere consideration, was really something which broke suddenly into his mind, momentarily shoving Hojo and his damn mission away.

It was eight o'clock in the morning when someone knocked on his door.

"Your breakfast is ready, Sir."

"Come in."

Like every morning, Nicolle came in, carrying the ordinate platter, with his rich breakfast, in her hands. She had been working in his palace for ages, and she had never - never _ever _- committed an error. Her services had always been flawless, her gestures secure and rapid.  
But that morning, at his sight, Nicolle widened her dark eyes - and _dropped _the entire platter on the floor. Plus, in the following seconds, she didn't even find an apology to word.

The rumour of the cups breaking brought instantly back to his mind Aeris smashing glass statues everywhere, while Nicolle's broken expression brought back _Lockhart's _expression.  
_°°You're gorgeous.°°_

Long hair, short hair, it didn't matter. He was a General, before everyone else. He was a lord of war, before being the lord of a rebel woman.

There was just one thing that seemed like the correct thing to do right in that moment. He picked up the phone, and dialed Hojo's number.

---

_°°Let me introduce you to the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended _here_." °°_

Tifa, kneeling on her messy bed, was looking at the disconcerting piece of paper she had found on her pillow as soon as she had returned to her room, after having done her usual morning's tasks in the kitchens. On the note, there was a pair of scissors - _the _pair of scissors, not just one among all the others. The pair of scissors she had cut Sephiroth's hair with.

She could find only one meaning to those words, to those aseptic lines; and she didn't like it. They gave her an immediate violent panic, as if it was too late to do something to get back - just back from what, she still couldn't imagine.  
'_What did he mean? What the hell did he _mean_?'_

She rushed out of the dark room, holding the note tightly in her hand, and abandoning the scissors on a wavy blanket. Suddenly, she could hear the unusual sound of many helicopters taking off. Something - something _else _was happening, as if all the things that had happened yesterday hadn't been enough.

When she reached one of the innumerable glass walls of the palace, she noticed there was an unnatural agitation all around her, and that she hadn't been the only one watching on at the helicopters flying away, higher and higher in the sky. That image, that once would have reminded her of freedom, would just upset her now.  
She held the note tighter.

"What's happening?" she almost screamed, grabbing the arm of the nearest maid without the slightest sign of respect - and without caring much to hide her agitation, too.

The girl looked back at her half angry, but half intimidated. None actually dared to contradict Tifa Lockhart, lately, except Nicolle; they all perceived a strange and powerful aura surrounding that rebel woman.  
"Sephiroth and part of his soldiers who were on license here are leaving for the Corel Desert. The General is required by Hojo for a mission." she replied with disdain.

The strange sensation of non-getting back was there again - stronger than before.  
"What _kind _of mission?" she still hadn't loosened the grip on the maid's arm.

"Hojo wants him too kill the Ruby Weapon."

* * *

_"Look! Tifa look there!" _

_While the music was playing low inside the gondola, Tifa was abruptly distracted by the excited voice of Cloud. The two of them had been together for a month, now - and everything seemed so fucking perfect she thought she was daydreaming - that she hadn't _really _gotten with Cloud, like she had dreamed from the very first moment she had met him.  
__That was way squeezing her side against his while he pulled her nearer still giving her the damn butterflies._

_After having kissed him sweetly on his cheek, she almost pat her nose on the windowpane he was looking through. She could only see the colourful and blinding neon lights of the Gold Saucer flashing in the blue night, and all the other people having fun below. _

_So Tifa looked back at Cloud with a perplexed smile. She immediately noticed that his eyes were going further - he was looking _beyond _the immediate and artificial beauty of the Gold Saucer - he was looking beyond _everything_, as always.  
__"What are you looking at, Cloud?" she asked. _

_The blond haired boy almost smiled, his eyes lost far away.  
__"Into the desert, Teef. Look into the desert." he was pointing his finger into the furthest point of the horizon, almost. _

_Tifa tried to follow the imaginary line traced by his finger, and her crimson eyes finally reached something shimmering with purple reflections under the moonlight - it was barely a point into the never-ending vastness of the desert - but it was impossible to mistake its real dimensions. _

_The thing was _huge_ - so massive and scaring that her breath was taken away, and she tightened her grip on Cloud's lap so hard that he couldn't repress a lament - and a laugh immediately after.  
__But she was so upset that not even his arm slipping around her shoulder could calm her. __  
"What's that thing..!? It's a _monster_, Cloud! It's enormous!" she breathed, looking around with anxiously "What if it comes here? It will destroy everything…!"_

_Cloud laughed loudly this time, and began stroking her hair.  
__"Don't worry, it won't by any chance. It's not a monster, anyway- it is one if the ancient Weapons - the Ruby Weapon." he explained, still examining the far violet shape as if it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. _

_Tifa couldn't believe her ears.  
__"A _Weapon_? I thought that stuff was just a stupid legend.." _

_Cloud shook his head slowly.  
__"Well it's not. You should look at the Ruby carefully, Teef. Surely it's not something you can see everyday - maybe you will never see it again for the rest of your life. Weapons use to keep themselves hidden, when humans don't interfere with them." he paused "Well, not that a Weapon is really something a human _can _interfere with, actually" _

_The panic slowly faded away from her mind, while she abandoned herself to the sweet melody transmitted. There in the gondola, with Cloud's embrace warming her, she felt so safe and happy that even that creature appeared _beautiful _to her. It was far - too far to scare her, now._

_But she believed she saw the Ruby Weapon turning in their direction before sinking back mysteriously into the sand._

_

* * *

_

Sephiroth had been missing from the palace for _three _everlasting days, now.  
And his absence was literally driving Tifa crazy.

She had continued doing her jobs, anyway, but she felt void as an empty shell - but constantly assaulted by pure angst, on the other hand.  
Without Sephiroth around - without Aeris around, her life had lost all its meaning - the only thing that she was gripping on to continue doing what she was supposed to do, was exactly the thing that had saved her from her total breakdown some time before; and it was the _foetus _in her womb. She had even decided to stop her training, to keep it a little more, safe. To be honest, she was surprised it was still so attached to her, after all the stupid things she had done exposing it to danger.  
'_There is nothing left for me - nothing left for me except that.'_

The mission was supposed to last just one day - three days had passed instead, and there were still no tracks of Sephiroth - no tracks at all, and that had been abundantly enough to throw the whole palace - and the whole ShinRa - into turmoil.

Yes - there were zones of the desert which lacked the possibility of either sending or receiving radio signals, so everyone had just come to the conclusion that Sephiroth and his men must have gotten stuck in one of those areas. Plus, a furious sandstorm was precluding the army from sending any kind of external aid to help the General out of the desert.  
In other words, since the first day the General had left, none had a real proof that he was still alive - he had just disappeared.

By the way, none really knew why this new short haired Sephiroth had launched himself in a suicidal mission. No _human _could kill a _Weapon _- a creature of the planet - that was what they all said, even if they all refused to admit that the legendary Sephiroth could fail a mission, on the other hand.

Tifa felt in the middle of a nightmare.  
Every minute which passed, she was hoping to hear the sound of Sephiroth's helicopter coming back from the Continent, making the thin glass-walls tremble. She was imagining seeing the General standing victorious among his soldiers, his Masamune glowing in the sun, still dirty with the blood of the Ruby Weapon.

But that sound never came.  
So, every minute which passed, her hope inexorably got feebler, and a series of terrible thoughts made her stomach clench.

No human could interfere with Weapons - that was bloody true. And the more she read his note, the more it sounded like a fucking _farewell _to her - a farewell she didn't want to hear.  
Because, saying it bluntly, Sephiroth was the only person she had.  
She didn't even want to dig into their relationship, because the kind of relationship they had was a minor thing. _He was her only, _and she was suffering like when she had lost Cloud - like when she had lost her first little son.

_Blasphemy.  
_That was the only word she could find to describe her feelings. Comparing the death of her beloved husband with the vanishing of the sanguinary General was blasphemy.

But she couldn't help.  
She just couldn't help, and that hurt - she couldn't help trying to catch every conversation into the palace that might involve something about _him_, walking through the corridors like a ghost girl searching for his lost love, running to a casual glass-wall which faced the South, and forcing her gaze beyond the sky. She wished she could fall asleep, until someone came to tell her that he was alive - or that he was _dead_. Everything to stop the tension that was eating her.

The sky was always empty.

But he was there - somewhere. He was somewhere there in the outer world, where also her freedom laid. Because she understood that if she couldn't see him one last time, she would never be free again, anyway.  
'_If only he could see me now - if only he could _understand _what he has done to me-'_

_- chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now, it's complete because it's ended _here_."  
_At the sunset of the third day, alone on the rocky cliffs, looking at the empty sky, she had lost count of how many times she had read the only thing that could sort of bring his presence back.  
'_No, Sephiroth. This is not incomplete - nonetheless complete. This has just never started.'_

_---_

The mourning of the fourth day had passed, and Tifa was a mad woman who had reached her limit.

She didn't look at anyone, because in every face she could read the suspect that he was dead. She didn't look out of the windows, because seeing the sky empty had become too painful. She didn't try to eavesdrop pieces of conversations, because she couldn't bear to hear that he was still lost, and she was not ready to hear that he was dead, too. She didn't talk to anyone, not even to herself. Because there was part of her ego that _still _refused forcefully all that affection to such an ignoble man.  
She refused everything - high imaginary walls sheltered her, and this time she was not his prisoner - she had become prisoner of her own obsession.

The corridor she was crossing was surrounded by glass-walls.  
They were so tempting that she cursed the one who had designed the palace that way - and she wished her eyes were unable to see through glass.  
So she walked faster, to get out of there sooner - but the temptation of looking out of the windows was growing stronger every step she took. She began running.

When she finally reached the end of the corridor, before she could take a breath of relief, her head turned to the southern glass-wall against her will.

The sky was empty.

And exactly as she had suspected, she was unable to accept it this time.  
All her angst seemed to burst out while she slipped inescapably to _the _conviction.

None could kill a Weapon.  
And Sephiroth was dead.  
He was dead. He was dead, and she didn't have the strength to keep up any faltering illusion anymore. He was dead, and she was alone. He was dead and the sky was empty. And her _heart _was empty. And everything was meaningless, in vain.  
He was dead, because he _was _human, and -_not that a Weapon was really something a human _can _interfere with, actually.  
_And all she could do, once again, was just try to _forget _him.

She was running through the corridors without even noticing the strange confusion which was growing around. She ran until she reached the edge of the cliff - the one she used to sit on scanning the sky to find him. But now she knew. He was not coming back, because _he was human_, and he had plainly showed it to her, so many times lately. He was _not _coming back, because that note he had written, which she was now suspended in mid air, ready to let it fall down into the sea, spoke clearly.

_Now, it's complete because it's ended _here

So she _did _let it fall.  
If he was dead, she didn't want anything that could remind her of him, like she didn't want anything that could remind her of Cloud - that was why she partly hated the child in her womb from the beginning. That was why lately she had so often brought her body to the limit - in the primordial instinct to _get rid _of it, to protect her wounded soul from the excruciating memories.

But her child was still there - and he - or she - seemed to have no will to abandon her. That meant she could _not _get rid of Cloud.  
The hand-written note was whirling with the breeze, instead, and her eyes followed it until it landed gracefully on the surface of the sea far below - to then disappear under the first little wave.  
That meant she _could _get rid of Sephiroth.

That was what she believed for an instant.  
Because the instant after, the loud noise of helicopters high in the sky invested her.

---

The road from the cliffs to the palace had never seemed so long to her - it was like in the dreams: she felt as if she was trying to run without really succeeding. She was running hell fast, instead. When she finally reached one of the entrances, though, the sound of the helicopters had stopped from a while already - the only thing she could hear was her heart beating so hard in her chest that it reminded her of a bird in a cage.

'_What if he's dead? What if he's dead-?'_

In the tremendous rush of the run, with her mind completely absorbed by that only thought, she literally ended up smashing violently into someone - which surely was not Sephiroth. Her eyes would have seen only him, right in that moment - everyone else was just a futile obstacle dropping into her view.

The impact was so powerful that it made her bump on the wall, to then fall on the floor, while the other person involved just staggered a bit.  
As if nothing had happened, she was going to stand up, ready to continue the run.

But the one she had invested blocked her, seizing her arm firmly.  
"Tifa! Tifa it's _me_! I was searching for you.. Man you nearly knocked me out with that.."

As soon as she understood she was not going to get rid of that grip so easily, forced by circumstances, Tifa looked confused at the other one, angry for the delay already.

Zack.  
His black chaotic hair was even messier than usual - it looked like he had not even tried to comb it for days; most of his black uniform was ripped apart and paled because of the sand, one of his arm's were entirely covered with a dirty bandage. This time, he was not smiling as usual; he seemed too tired and suffering to do so - but his expression still managed to be kind, and his lips _were _trying to curve up, struggling against the pain.

She looked at him almost terrified - and she couldn't think about anything which was only Zack-related now. She didn't even want to know if he was okay, she didn't want him to tell her what had happened during those four days in the desert. The only thing that kept occurring to her mind was far more simple and plain.

'_He _knows_. He knows. He knows. He-'_

So she grabbed the edge of his uniform as if she was menacing him, before screaming with all the voice she had in her lungs.  
"IS HE _ALIVE_?"

The exchange of looks that followed was a mess of expectation, surprise - and delusion, too.

Tifa could be read by Zack like an open book, there in that corridor - and she _wanted _to be read, by the way, because having she hidden the way she felt just a little bit longer, she would have gotten crazy. She just wanted to know, _now_. No matter how much it would cost. It was not important what Zack would have thought - no, she didn't care at all. A lost woman she was, a lost woman she didn't mind to appear, while the beats of her heart echoed in her ears during Zack's perplexed silence.

Zack, on the other hand, was suspended between total disbelief and a sort of sadness. Not that he had expected her to throw her arms around him, but here things were ridiculously far from that - she was completely ignoring him. He knew girls even too well - and he could bet that the only thing that this girl was seeing in him right now was a _mean _to know if Sephiroth was alive.  
A few minutes ago, he was too tired to wonder why Sephiroth had sent him to search for one of his slaves, of all people.  
'_But now- eh, I do understand I guess..'_

"..You mean Seph? Of course he is."

There it was.  
Simple, obvious truth.

The moment Zack said that, Tifa felt incommensurably stupid and childish for having thought that Sephiroth might really have died. He was _not _human, after all. How could she ever have doubted that? How?

Then, all of her energy elapsed from her without warning, leaving her body alone and weak. She fell once again on the tiles, her knees not sustaining her anymore, while hot tears started wetting her cheeks.  
And this time, she didn't want to control herself. Because what she was feeling was guilty, blasphemous, outrageous, nonetheless _pure _joy.

Despite she had literally treated him like shit, Zack found himself feeling sorry for her. Even if he knew he couldn't be of any use to her, he was unable to just stand there looking at her bruising her eyes alone, bent on the floor. So he momentarily chose to ignore his oppressed pride, and a sympathetic smile appeared on his face.

"Oy. Why are you crying now? I said he is alive.. shouldn't you be happy? Or maybe you _really _wanted him to die..?" he joked.

When he raised her head by touching her chin, he noticed a hint of a smile among all her tears; with that, he was satisfied. His smile widened as he tried to pull her back to her feet.

Her cheeks were red stained, and her attempt to cover his face from his view was failing miserably. Now that she knew for sure - now that _Zack _knew for sure, she felt _so _ashamed and pathetic. But it had been her choice, after all.  
"I'm sorry…" she blurted out, not even knowing why exactly she was apologizing. Most likely, for the pitiable spectacle of herself she was giving once more to the black haired boy.

But Zack just shook his head.  
"I see." he paused, biting his lower lip. "Fucking shit, Tifa - look at what he has managed to do to you.." he stroked briefly her hair, unsure about what was the better thing to do in that moment. For an instant, he was tempted to hug her, but despite she was the first one burying her head into his chest in the end, still crying, he realised it wasn't that great of an idea.  
'_She doesn't even _feel _me now. That would just be stupid and opportunistic.'_

Tifa had lost completely the conception of time - so she didn't know for sure how many minutes had passed when slow, irregular steps resounded in the corridor at last.

Zack instinctively removed her from him, letting her look beyond his shoulder.

Sephiroth.  
He was there - alive.

He was there with his surprisingly short hair, his elfish face. He was tired, he was angry, he was scanning her with killer eyes - and she didn't get why. He had fresh blood spilt on the massive bondage of his abdomen, even if a medical equip had probably just changed it for him. Also one of his arms seemed seriously damaged.

In a word, he was _human_.  
But he had killed a Weapon.

She knew she was breaking all the rules.  
But she had desired this from the very first moment he had left for the desert - and she had spent _four _days fearing that it might have become too late to do that.

Instead, it was unmistakably not too late, when her dash towards the General left Zack there dumbfounded - just, this time she didn't want to risk to lose the chance. Furthermore, with her mind and her body incredibly agreeing, there was not a single possibility to stop her insane action.

_By the way, rules are made to be broken._

Tifa utterly jumped on Sephiroth without giving him the time to react, her arms tensed for some instants while she supported herself with her palms on his collarbones, to then collapse down, crimson locked with emerald. His head ended up in the crook of her neck, and both her hands slipped down his back, replaced by her elbow on his strong shoulder.

She was so upset, relieved and excited at the same time, that she had completely forgotten about Zack - she had completely forgotten that this should _not _be, because she was just a housemaid, and he was now officially the most powerful _- _not just man _- creature - _of Gea. She had forgotten that this was just her stupid dream, and that she had no right to go for it - she, a slave, was not allowed to hug a General, especially in presence of his Lieutenant - she was not _allowed_.

_Rules. _

Still, her mouth tracked the way from his temple to his ear, passionately.  
"Don't say _it's ended here_! Don't say it's ended here _anymore, _you _bastard_!" she cried to him with her usual shrill, ungraceful voice which came over her when she was distressed. But while she insulted him, her arms were wrapping tightly around his neck.

Using the arm which was not injured, Sephiroth hoisted her better on his shoulder, and placed his lips on her right arm with a half, exhausted smirk.  
"Crybabe - Get a _grip_."

---

While Sephiroth carried her away from the corridor, Zack and the way she had dealt with him were becoming a fuzzed memory to Tifa already. On the other hand, Sephiroth too had left his lieutenant there standing, without further explanations.  
'_We're both - _both _so deplorable, in the end'  
_Tifa barely noticed they had reached one of the main living rooms when he finally landed her delicately back on her feet, and this time she was not that surprised when she realized the lost contact with his body was almost unbearable.

The General flung himself on the sofa with a suffering groan, his fingers tensed in the vicinity of the blood-stain on his chest, yet too cautious to touch it, the other hand pressed on his forehead, partially hiding his tormented expression, as if all his accumulated fatigue had suddenly broke free. Tifa had missed his face while he had held her in his arms, while he had smirked - but only now she actually became conscious of how utterly shattered the man had to be. Yet, he had managed to take her there with no apparent difficulty.  
All the energies he had spared until that moment were now gathering in his burning eyes - he had the same inexplicable killer look of when he had spotted her back in the corridor, which made her bow her head, but didn't have the power to drive her crimson orbs away from his emerald.

"So, I suppose I shall be pleased to acknowledge that you and my Lieutenant are getting along very well, Miss Lockhart." he said with a bitter smirk. Even if he was in a dreadful condition, his sarcasm seemed in perfect shape.

Tifa, who had stopped crying but had still her face striped with tears, looked back at him bewildered. Her mind was so busy recalling the moment in which Sephiroth had held her, that she could not even remember that she was leaning on Zack when Sephiroth had seen her - right now, she had just a vague reminiscence of all the past four days, because the image of him reappearing in the corridor had washed all the rest away.

"Don't be silly" she found herself replying quietly to him, her eyes still widened and wet. "You saw nothing"

What the hell was that?  
The fact that it sounded so much like _jealousy _was just the craziest thing she had ever experienced. Sephiroth could never be jealous - he could never be jealous of her - and he would never let it show, especially.  
But, he was tired.  
She let out a ghastly giggle, looking away for a moment.  
'_This is pure madness.' _

Her giggle irritated him even more, and despite even lying there was excruciating, he sat up. But his wounded arm was trembling under his weight.  
"I bet you are having so much fun, aren't you? Seeing me this way must have been your secret dream from the very first moment you had entered my palace" he hissed, biting his lips from the overall pain. "As you can see, I'm _human_, Lockhart. Even too human."

Tifa could see he was really livid, and he was not faking it. She could see he meant every word he was saying - he had never been the chit-chat type, by the way.

Yes, it _had _been her dream. Seeing him _bleed_. Seeing him vulnerable. And it was so stunning to get to know how little joy the realism of her desire was bringing her now.  
But, of course, he did not comprehend that. He had not sorted that out from her hug, and he was not sorting that out from her aching façade.  
He was too angry with himself. He was angry because he had permitted another creature to hurt him to that point, she could guess. But it seemed such a fucking dense thought - did he even realize it was a _Weapon _he had fought with?

"Yes. I am so delighted by seeing you this way that I can hardly contain myself." she spat out with flat voice, a sulky smile frozen on her lips.

He tried to stand up, provoked by her glacial irony, but his shaking arm betrayed him, and he collapsed back on the sofa. Though, he had not missed the way the woman had rushed forward when he had been on the edge of falling.  
"What were you trying to do? To _help_?" he scowled, sounding outraged, hitting her with a disgusted look "I want none's pity"

He really was blind.  
His wounded pride would let him see nothing but the injuries the battle had procured him - which sure, were bad ones. Probably the worst ones he had ever received but-

"I was going to _die_." his harsh voice cut off her trail of thought "I was going to die - just the prompt intervention of the medical equip had saved me. I would be dead otherwise, there in the sand, my corpse beside the Weapon's one." his eyes were lost into nothingness while he articulated slowly each word, as if he himself could not believe what he was saying. "I've passed all these years trusting my power and my skills blindly, and now - hell Lockhart. That thing was going to kill me. That thing _would _have killed me if just-" he shook his head "I'm so ashamed of my _weakness _I'd prefer having really died"

Tifa could not believe her ears.  
Sephiroth was literally opening his heart to her - and he was serious in his own desperation, even if she could hardly listen to all the nonsense he was talking without slapping him hard.  
She chuckled briefly, before stepping towards him, her knees inches from his face.

"You know nothing about weakness. You are not weak Sephiroth and - fuck, I surely don't want to be the one who has to cheer you up. You're just being pathetic."

'Weakness_. Fuck him. Fuck him. Can't he see what weakness really is, just looking up? Can't he see how weak _I _am? Can't he see the way he has changed me with no return? And he comes here speaking about weakness-'_

Tifa kneeled down slow, taking his flabbergasted face in her unsteady hands, glaring at him with reproachful narrowed eyes. But she understood he was not searching for simulated praises - he really was breaking down.  
"How can you?" she kept her shrill voice low, clenching her teeth "How can you lose confidence in yourself just after having killed the most powerful creature in the whole Gea, and managed to come back here now and talk about it? You have _won_, and still you act the victim. This is absurd." she pulled one of his silver short locks, noticing that it was blood-stained, too.

"You know, Aeris ditched me."

That was completely out of the blue, and they both knew it.

Tifa's hands let go of his head after he had spoken, as if she had just been hurt - but they didn't drive their eyes away from each other's.  
Why was he telling anyway? Everyone knew already- so why? There was no need to be so direct on such a difficult subject.

"Yeah - I had gathered that from the mess in that room, days ago." she raised an eyebrow, fighting to contain her angst, "and - do you miss her?"

Sephiroth sniggered, and for the first time, he looked away.

"I don't know." he replied honestly. "I don't know what to think right now. Just that, it's not my main problem." he finished, eyeing with repressed rage the brilliant red blood expanding on the bandage on his chest.

'_So, are you a heartless bastard? Or are you a person with feelings just like everyone else? Just like _me_?'  
_But she could never ask him such a thing. She was so tensed - she felt as if she was on the edge of _reaching _him this time - but she had the suspect he might fly back up high leaving her there as soon as she would try to stretch her hand out.

Sephiroth stirred difficultly, adjusting his position on the sofa while repressing a groan. He raised his wounded arm: his hand was still shuddering awkwardly.

"Look." he began, while he contemplated his long pale shaking fingers "I can't even stop this. I have no control on it. They say my hand will never be the same again - that Lord-knows-what is damaged forever. I've lost. They will all despise me - none will want a General with an out-of-order hand" he sneered, trying to clutch his fist - but his fingers couldn't even reach each other.

So he really couldn't see.  
He was not realising that what he had done was probably something which was going to be remembered for centuries - that he was going to be everyone's hero. Those wounds were blurring his mind, and in the same way he had never had any sympathy for everyone else, he had not saved it for himself, for sure.  
In that moment, Tifa knew that there was nothing she could say to take him out that abyss. He _was _the man he had always been, with his shining strength - yet he was not, because he himself didn't want to believe it.

Tifa got up, trying to hide with her long black hair the surrendering grimace depicted on her lips, and in the same moment he let his trembling hand fall on his chest.

Showing him her shoulders, Tifa could not tell him anything but what she really was thinking.  
"They won't" she tried to sound indifferent, but she was pouring all her emotions in those words "None will despise you. They will all love you, and respect you - and _fear _you even more. That is all."

She felt a strange darkness coming over her while she turned back to him - her feelings were so wrong, yet she could not stop. Not even trying to recall the image of Sephiroth stabbing Cloud and her son could make her hate him, now.  
'_Look at what you have done, Sephiroth'_

Sephiroth laughed briefly at her words, and he looked concentrated for an instant, as if he was deciding whether to believe her or not.  
"I think I hate you, Lockhart." he said gravely, while struggling to assume a sitting position.

"That's not big news" she shot back immediately.

"Because I swore to myself that I would never let someone see my weaknesses. But I've let _you_. Two times" he sounded calm despite all, and almost gentle. "You are not weak, if no one can see that you are. But if there is someone who can, you become weak automatically. _You _have made me weak."

Tifa's heart was going to explode in her chest, while hearing that.  
She could grasp the meaning of his words, yet it all seemed utterly absurd.

_°As you can see, I'm human, Lockhart. Even too human°  
_Giving in, she reached the sofa again, bending on him, one of her knees laying beside his, the other one between his legs. She shut her enraged eyes for an instant. Then she took his trembling hand, which suddenly looked firm in hers, stroking it with her thumb.

"You are _not _weak - and these are just stupid wounds that you will recover from. Because you're fucking not human, in the end." she whispered sharply "You're the usual egocentric striking bastard, who makes me say these words without realising how much they may cost me."

Sephiroth did not reply immediately. He seemed lost in her eyes, which were so near, but his mind was far away from that room.

"_It _- it was the same colour of your eyes. The whole massive thing looked the same way your eyes look in the darkness - dark yet brilliant ruby. And while I was there in the middle of the desert, it just popped into my mind: _'Same as Lockhart's eyes.'. _I actually had that thought before starting to stab it - and I realised I must be mad, recalling _you, _in such a moment. Don't you think, Lockhart?"

Almost holding her breath, Tifa let out a brief nervous laugh.  
"Well - if you really thought that, than yes, I do. I think you must be mad"

Sephiroth shook slowly his head, pressing the sane hand on his eyes. He was smiling now.  
"What about you? Don't you think you might be mad too, maybe?" he asked, half serious, half sarcastic, eyeing her with just one eye among his fingers.

"I do" she breathed, lowering her head a little towards his, smooth black hair falling on his shoulder. In the moment she let go of his long fingered hand, it began trembling again - and that was heartbreaking.

But Sephiroth only seemed bemused now.  
"You do." he let his shaking hand linger just beside her cheek, he touched a lock of her hair, and then went on with an intriguing smile "So come on, make some examples. Illuminate me."

"I think I must be mad, when I happen to grieve on my husband's assassin's absence, and throw my arms around him when he's back. Don't you think, Sephiroth?" she mimicked him, even if her voice was stern.

Sephiroth, on the other hand, laughed - his was worn out and yielding a laugh, that seemed to hurt every muscle in his chest.  
"Well - if you really do that, then yes, I do. I think you must be mad" he repeated with no flaw her previous formula, showing that his brain was still working perfectly even if he was playing the loser. "And that makes the both of us mad. How come we've reached this point, Lockhart?"

"That was your fault" she spat out childishly, showing him the last tracks of her anger. But she knew it was just a matter of time, because anger had been fleeing from her body for so long, now. For every bit of rage she expressed, her heart ached to let out a bit of the other face of the medal. So she entwined her fingers with his for one last time, noticing for the first time that he had let her treat him like his lover without even a cutting remark. "I was so _worried _- you can't imagine how worried I was." she spoke with anguish, even if it was all over, and he was there now. "I was afraid you might-"

"Lockhart-" he stopped her, his deep eyes preventing her from looking away. "This is just pure nonsense. There are things I've done that I can't - you _can't_-" but he paused, because he just didn't know how to go on. "Fine. Fuck everything, then. I'm here now - alive. And I don't want to think - I don't want to think about complicated things."

_Complicated_.  
He probably had found more ease slicing an ancestral ruby monster into a thousand pieces, than having to face the consequences of their incomprehensible relationship. All the talking they had made, and yet there was nothing limpid that could be extracted from it. It was making him nervous, the same way thinking about Aeris had made him feel.

But the moment after, Lockhart was lowering her head at the point that the tip of their noses were touching.

"I suck" she hissed heatedly "You have made me an awful woman. I feel so guilty, and it's your fault." she was feeling all that darkness in her heart again - that could _not _be love.

Love never made you feel in such a way. Love was something _positive,_ love was - just not like that.  
It was a _beast_, the thing which was growing in her chest - but she was welcoming it with all herself nonetheless, in that moment.

"My dear lady, ask me anything, but don't ask me to be sorry about what I've done. You know I could never be." he was hell serious. "I'll always be a sinner, as you will always be cold, and dark. Because I can't deny what I am, and you can't deny the hole in your heart - that the things you've lost have left you."

A tear fell from Tifa's eyelid down on Sephiroth's cheek. She was biting her lower lip desperately. She wanted to speak - she wanted to tell him that at this point she didn't even want him to change - she liked even the _worst _of him.

"You have shouted, you have cried, you have insulted me and acted as if you were the weakest woman on Gea, and then as if you were the strongest. But reality is, that a part of you has always been wrapped into darkness. Maybe you're even more cold and indifferent than I am, Lockhart"

When she felt his hand snaking up her leg, her cheeks flushed instantly in an almost violent way, while her eyes widened just a little. She got even nearer, her chest slightly touching his neck, trying to hide her uneasy breathing.

"I think you're beautiful, Lockhart. At least, in a way. Beautiful but dark. So tell me" he went on, and his voice was pure velvet when his hand stopped just under the edge of her black miniskirt, running it a little bit higher "Is there anything - anything we can do to solve this?"

When their lips touched for the first time, it was a light and almost tentative kiss.

Seeing Sephiroth with his eyes closed just there inches from her, his refined elfish features sliding under her touch was enough to make her lose her head. She broke away, and butterfly kissed him again so many times she ended up losing count, pressing a little harder every time. _Kissing _him - she could not believe it. She would have rather gone with _sex_, than innocent kisses.

She drew her head back for the last time, and instantly she knew that staying away from him was too difficult. She was pulling his hair, and biting her own lip, instead of his, like the last time there in the bathroom. She looked away from his ajar mouth, still breathing upon it, but trying to let go of him while scanning all the blood on his abdomen - and there was no fucking way.

His sane hand was lost somewhere under her vest, stroking her spine, up to her shoulder-blade, and she had barely noticed it. She had never lusted after a kiss so much - _never_. Not even with Cloud.

And when finally Sephiroth leaned over, searching her lips with his again, she was downright lost into ecstasy - she thought she was going to burst out into tears when her tongue met the tip of the General's on the threshold of her mouth. When she pulled together the strength to look into his eyes, she could not see any of her fears, nor any of her regrets reflecting on them. There was just a smirk - _his _satisfied smirk on his face.

Tifa was perfectly conscious she had _no _excuses for what she was doing - she was the worst of the betrayers, she was not less of a sinner than he could be, now. But she didn't _want _to stop the passion that made her tongue search for Sephiroth's again, that made her hands touch him all over, unconsciously careful not to hurt him where he was wounded.

'_It will be - just a kiss, I promise'_

But oh - the way they kiss burnt.  
It burnt away all her darkness.

**End of chapter 9**

* * *

**Author's note**: Weeeell.. I guess it's been a long time, but hey here it is, the fic is not dead (still, lol) You know, it's just a chapter to the end, unless major changes pop into my mind, which I really don't think.  
Little desclaimers: the attitutude of the knife is taken from Herbert's 'Dune', whereas human, all-too-human is Nietszche's.  
What else can I say, I hope I'll come out with chapter 10 soon..

Thankies to my beta and friend Stacey aka Amaranthos - go check her profile and ask her to continue Behind Black Curtains eh!!

Folks, this was a rather important chap, so I don't even need to mention that hearing what did you think about it is essential to me, I guess.  
Oh and another thing just for my sake - how would you like this to end?? Ahahaha.. Even if it's already planned I'm curious..

Take care,

Swamp-eyes

PS. If you want to see a sketch with Tifa and Seph from this chapter, visit my myspace (homepage in profile). It is in pics, 'my art' Let me know..


	10. A Sinking Medal

**Subservience**

* * *

**Chapter 10  
****A sinking medal **

* * *

_The door it stands ajar  
__It was, it once was high beyond the guilded cage  
__Beyond the reach of time, the moment is at hand  
__She breaks the golden band_

_(Pink Floyd)_

* * *

Someone was knocking on the old wood door of Aeris' bedroom.  
In these days, she had learned how to discern who was whom - and from the strength and the latent impatience in those knocks, she had no doubt the person outside her door was Professor Gast, this time.  
Aeris didn't move nor replied - she was tightening her arms around her knees, as if she was trying to keep herself whole, her back on the cushion, and the soft and warm blanket falling down her shoulder. Her eyes were wide and fixed on the television, which volume was set to 'mute', for obvious reasons.  
The shadows of huge snowflakes crossed the thin curtain of her small window - it was snowing in Icicle, as always, despite the good season was supposed to be there already. But she didn't - she _couldn__'__t _even notice them - her eyes were all for the television.

Her eyes were all for Sephiroth.

"Aeris. When are you going to stop this absurdness?" her father voice was surely sharp - but the pain in it was clear, and touching, too. And _she _could hear it so well, more than anyone else except her mother. Gast tried to push the door open, without putting in it more effort than it would be needed if the door wasn't locked. But of course, it _was _locked. And Aeris didn't miss even his suppressed sigh. "Aeris. Come out already. We _do _know what you're doing in there - I'm not saying that we appreciate it - but we can see - we can understand. You can come out and do that in front of us. There is no need to be ashamed."

No reply.

Still, after all those hours she had been checking him out, she had not gotten acquitted to that _hair_. She had not even recognized him at first, in that first picture of him blood-covered and half unconscious, being carried on an helicopter by two doctors was all the News on the TV had transmitted - it hadn't even occurred to her that it was her own fault, if his hair was like that right in that moment.  
_Yes_, she had cried so pathetically for relief, when she had discovered he was still alive, somewhere out there, even if now they were parted. She had cried pathetically while hearing Gast muttering something harsh just outside her door, someone sounding like _'..preferred _him _dead, and not the innocent Weapon' _, and Ifalna replying something with her voice so low she couldn't catch it.  
Right now, on the blurred screen - the signal there in Icicle was never great - Sephiroth was tiredly facing one of the first - and, knowing him, probably _last _- official interviews, his face really, really annoyed by the multiple flashes of the cameras hitting his perfect features, now completely exposed for the lack of his legendary hair. If it hadn't been for an imperceptible bruise on his forehead, he looked like he had never done something treacherous like fighting a Weapon - he was perfect in his Shin-Ra dark uniform, no bandages in sight, and just one huge golden medal on his chest.

"Fine then. Keep burying yourself in that room, if you reckon that's the best thing for you." her father continued "As long as we get the void dishes back, we know you're alive." he paused, pondering if he should add something else. Of course, he didn't resist, and just had to go beyond his previous sarcasm. "Aeris, my dear." his tone had softened and become more hard-edged at the same time. "It's not the _scientist _who's talking to you now - he would have kicked you out of this house already for grieving in pain after a Weapon-murdered." there was sincere and burning rage in that sentence "It's just your _father_. Please, Aeris, _stop_. Turn off the television, and forget him. You're not the first one who has to go through this sort of thing - so please don't- You will just forget him - you will recover, like everyone else."

Aeris smiled bitterly.  
Gast just couldn't see - there was nothing to recover from - there was nothing left at all, if there wasn't him.

Ah - the way he looked hell bored by the futile questions the journalists were feeding him with. The way he looked so much like an arrogant jerk when he hissed something to his assistant, and then just left the room scornfully, while the flashes on him grew even thicker. That was so typical of him - and her smile was not bitter anymore. Nothing, nothing ever picked his interest. She could bet he had gotten a little fed up even while fighting the Ruby Weapon.  
'_But he was _not _bored when we argued for the last time, was he..?' _she was unable to avoid the little satisfactory thought.

"Listen carefully, daughter. Enjoy him on the TV, while you can. You're _not _going to see that man again, ever. I'll _prohibit _that to you -for your health. I'm still you're father, remember."

She stayed there completely still, even breathing slowly, waiting for her father to go away. When she finally heard his footsteps fading down the stairs, she got up.

_°°You will recover, like everyone else.°°_

She was barefoot, and her light paces on the wooden floor couldn't be heard by her parents. Inspiring slowly, she opened one of her drawers. Her hand moved securely towards the exact point she had hidden it from herself, underneath a pile of her own clothes - and when her fingers found the cold object, it felt like a thousand years she hadn't touched it.  
It had barely been a week, instead.

Her pink metallic mobile phone was there on her palm now, its screen pitch black, as if it was dead.  
She had switched it off the very first moment she had left the palace, back then. After that - _no_, it hadn't been easy at all - her whole body had struggled for the first days, because a part of her had wanted to destroy it by smashing it on a wall - part of her had just wanted to speed-dial him, and beg him to accept her back. Then, there had been the news of Sephiroth just vanishing into the desert, and the phone had become a minor problem to her. But even when she had known for sure he _was _back, she hadn't touched the phone. She was conscious of the fact that hearing it stay silent when it couldn't even possibly ring was childishly less painful then hearing it stay silent just because he was not calling.  
The blanket was still cascading from her shoulder, grazing the pavement as she walked towards the window. She opened it with her free hand, switching the phone on in the same moment. Breathtakingly icy air filled her lungs, while her knees trembled, and in the padded snowy atmosphere she could hear her own heart thumping wildly.

Hardly twenty-four hours had passed since Sephiroth had returned to the palace - and she knew he had probably got stuck with a thousand impelling obligations that calling her couldn't even possibly have touched his mind. But her decisions was made.

'_If he hasn't called, this - _all _this - will disappear into the snow.'_

_°°You will recover, like everyone else.°°_

Having been secluded for so long in that room, she actually fancied the freezing gusts coming from outside - some snowflakes managed to fall in, too, liquefying soon on the dark wood.  
Really, as she stared at the mute phone, waiting, she herself didn't know if she was actually hoping in this or not.

--

Tifa had stopped liking her days off when she had decided that her hard training was dangerous for her still half unwanted foetus, and had cut almost every unnecessary physical activity out from her free time. So, having absolutely nothing to do in a normal day there at that aseptic palace usually made her miss the house-chores.

Having nothing to do _that _day, instead, was pure hell.

She wasn't really feeling well, she reckoned.  
It was like - feeling torn between dreams and reality.

She had forced herself to leave the palace, that morning - because there was absolutely no way she could deal rationally with all the stuff which had happened, for now. And the front pages of every newspaper with _his _pictures splattered around she had seen in the palace weren't really helping her out. In a similar way, journalists stepping in every corridor, Shin-Ra men walking around with their head high, doctors, scientist - all kind of people in there weren't helping her, either - because his name was on every mouth, while she was desperately trying not to think about him.

'_He was fucking _everywhere_'  
_But still - the total and freaking absurdness in the fact that she - she had kissed the same man they were all talking about.

When she recalled that moment, the pulse of blood seemed to spread in her whole body a sensation of authentic and almost primordial panic, and she had been hovering in its grasp since the very first moment they had broke the kiss.  
'_I have not kissed General Sephiroth'  
_She was so insignificant, especially in that moment, that it really was utterly nonsensical that a waste like her could get the attention of _that _person.

There out, a few hundred metres far from the palace's walls, ShinRa and Weapons sort of seemed locked in another dimension - as was Sephiroth. And if it weren't because of her constantly and frighteningly accelerated pulse, she could almost think she had imagined the whole episode, after all.

She was stepping down an overhanging stairway, scraped directly into the dark rocks of the cliffs, which was the only way leading from the palace directly to the sea's water. It was less than one meter large, and there were no rails at all to prevent who was walking from falling down helplessly into the unwelcoming sea - plus, they were ruined in various spots, and got even narrower every now and then. Surely she had gone trough worse passages, but she had to admit that impractical stair had the power to give enough vertigos even to her. She smirked - she highly doubted someone had ever used those stairs except from Sephiroth - and the ones who had built them, probably.

The sun was burning her pale skin, high from the azure clean sky - so much time had passed since she had last exposed herself to the sunrays for a long time. Fortunately, the intense wind roaring in her ears, remnant of the tempest which had invested the palace that night, kept her cool - her head spinning because of the hotness was the last thing she needed there on those unsafe stairs.  
When she heard footsteps not far behind her, of someone starting to descend the stairway to reach her, she widened her eyes. But before she could turn back, the voice revealed her who her visitor was.

"Tifa - don't tell me you're going to commit suicide- 's not worth it, believe me." Zack almost had to yell, to have his voice overcome the wind.

He surely looked like another man, if compared to yesterday. His dark hair, which she had last saw caked with the sand, were shining brightly into the sun while being messed by the gusts. He jumped with no difficult down the stairs two-by-two, even if there was still a worrying bandage coming into view from under his turtleneck black vest, which covered his whole left arm - the same one he was unwisely using to sustain himself on the rock-wall, by the way.

Tifa, without knowing why, felt absolutely terrified and went instantly woozy at the sight of him descending those stairs so quickly and recklessly. She moved a few hurried and equally unsafe paces towards him.  
"Hell - Zack, be careful!" she squeaked, trying to catch him even if there was no need.

With his last jump, they found each other on the same tiny stair. Now, her head was actually spinning for her sudden previous movement, so she rested her back on the rocks, sticking to the wall as if the stair was not a meter large, but barely a few inches. She kept opening and closing her eyes - the former to catch glimpses of Zack's deep purplish-blue eyes dazzling and happy like the first time she had seen them, the latter to try and stop the dizziness which was menacing to let her slip down that never-ending stairway.  
Zack, instead, was in the outer part of the stair, one of his feet even leaning partially out into the nothingness. But he was perfectly relaxed, while trying to put his body between Tifa and the precipice.

"Tifa - I'm a soldier" his voice this time was vibrant and captivating, nothing which could remind not even by far the exhausted and defeated tone he had used with her yesterday. And, definitely, that didn't look like a game of make pretend. It was just _Zack_, back. "There is no way an unsafe stair can scare me." he just snapped. Then, he tilted his head just a little "But _you _- you're not looking good. You got terribly paler in the last few seconds."

Tifa covered her face for a moment, trying to forget the image of Zack jumping carelessly down the stairway.  
"Unh - yeah. Actually, I think I have this disorder - when I see someone doing something idiotically hazardous like you did a minute ago, _I _happen to feel bad in their place" she explained with an embarrassed smile.

Zack arched a brow.  
"That sounds like you care - you know, I had actually given up all hope"

She blushed heavily. It had been easy to go through that when she had been completely intoxicated by Sephiroth's presence. But now that Zack was in front of her, the memory of the way she had dealt with him wounded when they had met in that corridor was vivid and painful.  
"Zack - I - for _yesterday.. _I - actually" she didn't even know what she was trying to say with that pathetic attempt - but she was feeling the urge to do it.

But he instantly shook his head, raising his hand and laughing limpidly.  
"Tifa - please. Save that, really. There's no need. There is nothing you really need to apol-"

"No - listen." it was her turn to interrupt him. She clutched to his arm in an almost violent way, trying desperately to lock her gaze with his to give away the way she felt "I am sorry. I was - the _worst_."

There was a pause of silence. Though, it was not unnatural nor uncomfortable, because the roaring wind was making its job by filling it, both their black hair flying around, sometimes coming in touch with each other.

Then, Zack attempted to caress her cheek, but let his hand fall down before he could even touch her, with no apparent reason. He gazed for a while at the wavy sea down below, and then his eyes returned to Tifa, half sly and half teasing.  
"Yeah - I guess you were."

Tifa raised her head, eyes wide shut at his bluntness, but she couldn't suppress a giggle despite all. When he laughed in her face, too, she punched him with no conviction in the middle of his chest, hoping not to hit any wound.

"Ouch" he joked, rolling his eyes, not trying to stop her. "This too, as if all the rest hadn't been enough"

When their laughter vanished, Zack finally found the force to mess her black hair for a second.

"You know, Tifa. I wasn't just trying to use a cliché sentence before, when I told you there was nothing you really needed to apologise for." his deep purple orbs, narrower than usual, fell on her with a sort of sympathy, this time. "I've been living by his side for a couple of _decades_. So, I just happen to know what he's capable of doing to people, on purpose sometimes, but just for existing so many others. He makes their world revolve around him - defines their existence. Until they reach the point they become even quite happy to let him."

Now, Tifa's expression had become blank and almost scared.  
It was not that she had never had similar thoughts - just listening to them said aloud by a third person, who was not involved in that at all, was striking for sure. But, once again - could she really define Zack as 'not involved'? By the way, he was practically admitting it; maybe he had better ways than hers to hide it - he didn't throw his arms around his neck as soon as he spotted him, for example - but was he _really _unaffected by the General's existence?  
She didn't reply for now - she just bit her lower lip, scrutinizing Zack, trying to understand if he was talking about himself, too.

"I won't even mention my cousin - because that was just a few days ago, and - and.. that was really one of the worst things that had ever happened to me - seeing her _that _way - and I just couldn't-" he paused, with a ghastly shadow on his face, but it was clear that he was not going to bring up the subject again. Suddenly, an amused smirk appeared on his face "The last one, was today. There was that ShinRa's pseudo first lady, Scarlet. I had never seen her so worn-out. I mean, she plays the fucking blonde Barbie all the time usually, if you know the type, and an out-of-place lash probably is to her a tragedy comparable with the end of the world. Well - this time she had even black make up running down her face, and her blond hair was _so _far from perfect. When she met Sephiroth, she has hugged him - not with a passion, ok, but she wasn't that far from it. Plus, she was smiling _sincerely _- never knew Barbie could do such wonders - she had never showed that to _me_, at least."

She knew that wasn't Zack's purpose. But, still, she felt a pang in her heart when she imagined Sephiroth and Scarlet hugging. There was just a question bothering her - did he hug Scarlet back the same way she had done with her? Had he-?  
In the end, not a single word Zack had pronounced seemed to have reach its point - which was warning her. It was just too late.

Definitely he didn't miss it, because he shook his head slowly with a half surrendering smile.  
"Completely lost, aren't you?" he just sighed. He wasn't expecting an answer, so he eventually went on "Anyway - I'm not here to _lecture _you, don't worry. Not only I don't believe that would work, but doing that stuff it's not my thing, also."

Tifa hid her face behind her hand. She wished Zack hadn't talked about Sephiroth - he was a cheerful and pleasant person to have around.. But that subject was just-  
"So what're you up to now, Zack? You gained notoriety too, with this Weapon episode?" she asked with a knowing smile. "You'll have a life even more full of top-secret missions, parties, and girls from now, right?"  
'_Damn glittering world I will never get'_

He scratched his neck.  
"Well, actually - yes. I'm in a pause between two interviews, right now." he even watched the sun up in the sky, to figure out if midday was past or not. "After all, I'm the Weapon's murderer's Lieutenant, and I was there in the desert with him, conscious, all the time - mh, let's say, _slightly _all the time." he admitted. But the pride in his voice hadn't still completely faded "And no - there's no way I'm going to anticipate you the details of the fight - you're gonna read them when they'll be released on the newspaper, like everyone else." he stuck his tongue out. "Unless Sephiroth doesn't tell you" he added more slyly.

Tifa laughed.  
"I don't think I will ask him" her voice was a timid whisper. Noticing that Zack was looking up at the sun again, she sighed "You can go, Zack. I don't want you to be late somewhere because of me. Thanks for the visit, really. Mh-" she was still too worried for what she had done to him the previous day to be too kind - she was just afraid he would have mistaken it for hypocrisy.  
Indeed, she wanted to ask him to have a walk with her down to the sea, but that would have sounded really inappropriate. So she just ran a hand through her hair, to remove it from her face, where the wind kept scattering it, and lowered her gaze.

Zack observed her briefly, apparently pondering something.

Then, with impressive quietness and easiness, he kissed Tifa on her lips. That was not even a kiss - it was barely a graze - something so contained it might appear like a simple hand shake.  
Her back was still on the rocks, and both her hands were gripping on it, too, while Zack's sane one was leaning at the side of her head.  
That had been so unexpected she hadn't had the time to process the thing in her mind - she actually couldn't think about anything - she could just stare at him, not in awe, not in rage. Though she was black minded, she felt compelled to say something, so she opened her mouth to save the appearances, to show him she was giving it a try, at least.

But he was the one who spoke first, still firm in front of her, completely unashamed.  
"I was _serious _with you Tifa - I was serious all the way through."

And from his tone, she knew he unmistakably meant it.

--

Tifa had lost the conception of time, but she could easily gather from the sun now slightly pending to the West that midday was gone.  
Her confusion did nothing except growing bigger - and _yes_, she still hadn't entered the palace, afraid of which new mess she would have found in there. She felt safer out in the nature, in company of the wind, now slowly ceasing - the sensation of freedom that invested her every time she looked at the limpid horizon was inexplicable.

Behind her, the palace - a cage full of psychos.  
Sephiroth, Scarlet, Zack, Hojo, all those hungry journalists, all those merciless ShinRa men - and yeah, _herself_, of course. She was so mired in all that like everyone else, she was fearing it was too late to have her old personality back.  
There, on the top of the most overhanging cliff, she could perceive the wildness of the Northern Continent more than she had on the derelict stair she had left a while ago.  
In front of her, nothingness for countless miles.  
Calling nothingness.  
Was nothingness the freedom from all those annoying stitches in her mind - from that light yet relentless angst?

She didn't notice someone was coming until his foot stomped out of the soft overgrown grass, on the corroded rocks on the edge of the cliff, making them cringle, a meter from her.  
Unaccompanied by his sarcastic smirk, unaccompanied by his hitting remarks he used to introduce himself with, unaccompanied by the surrendering pain of the previous day, there he was - her short haired General.

And in the moment she placed her eyes on him, she knew she had fooled herself another time - her angst wasn't relentless at all, because it had just disappeared.  
Discouraged by that clear sign, which elucidated to her pathetically plainly the way she felt, just in case she was still trying to ignore it, she sunk her head in her hand.

Sephiroth noticed the whole dynamic, but remained silent - he even kept respectful the smirk on his lips. He reached Tifa's side, but instead of looking at her, he looked where she was looking at - the sea in front of them. He was dressed in the same way they had wanted him during official interviews - the way he hated most - the way everyone else liked most. He remembered even _Aeris_, telling him he looked sexy in his uniform. The huge new gold medal on his chest was gathering the sunlight as if it was a black hole, and he almost felt its heaviness on his heart.

Tifa didn't greet him, too.  
It had never happened to her before - but this time she felt ashamed for the way she was dressed, as if she couldn't stand the comparison with him. She tried to pull an edge of fabric of the oversized vest she was wearing up her bare shoulder, but there was no way. So she stared back at the sea with a childish pout.  
'_This is so confusing-_'  
The reality was, that after what had happened the day before, having him by her side without doing anything was painful and difficult. She could feel her hands drawn to his hair, her mouth to his neck, and-

But he had walked there, and he was wisely maintaining a distance. It was definitely not up to her to change the situation, even if it was a struggle. She couldn't, because in the end there was _nothing _between them.  
'_What were you expecting - Sephiroth to begin treating you like a _lover_, all of a sudden?'  
_She could suffocate the urge of touching him - as for the rest, she gave in and turned to him. And he was beautiful. He was so beautiful.

Sephiroth slowly turned to her too, but just as he had expected, when he had her in his sight, she had turned back to the sea already. And this time, he couldn't help a chuckle.  
"You _can _look at me. It's not strictly forbidden"

It was hard to believe that it was still possible to kid about this - but so was it, if he was doing that. Tifa snorted and lowered her gaze in embarrassment. Then, when she was sure he wasn't looking at her anymore, she turned to him once again, even if she had considered the hypothesis that he had done that on purpose, just to allow her to look at him. Her eyes left his face for a moment, moving lower; she spotted his trembling pale hand sticking out the dark sleeve of the uniform, and she widened her eyes in surprise when she noticed that he was rhythmically moving his fingers, clutching them together and opening them back.

"Your hand..!" was the first two words she was able to tell him.

When their eyes met, they were both more relaxed now.

Sephiroth took a step closer, with a dry smile. He showed her his hand naturally, clutching his fingers again not far from her nose. She cloud discern clearly a chirurgical scar that started from the centre of his palm, and disappeared under his sleeve.  
Tifa raised her own hand under the impulse of touching his, but she stopped, still feeling too invading - but it was Sephiroth the one who squeezed her fingers between his, lightly and insecurely, for an instant. She knew the hesitation was a product of his still recovering nerves, she knew the confident smile on his lips was just for the satisfaction of showing that yes, after all he had his hand back - after all that incident hadn't marked him with any handicap. After all he was the best.  
Still, in the moment he had touched her hand, her breath was gone.

"You said it was a wound without return" she observed with a whisper, drawing her hand back to avoid any other stupid temptation.

"Yeah, that was the diagnosis" Sephiroth replied calmly.

"I thought - you - I mean.. I thought you might be unable to move it again for the rest of your life. Instead, just the day after -" Tifa paused, muted by her own thoughts "You really are not human."

Sephiroth laughed even if he knew that it wasn't a joke.  
"This time, the credit really has to be given to someone else" he become suddenly serious, while looking at his trembling hand.

She didn't understand at first, and even during the process of examining all the possibilities with a frown, her eyes remained fixed on his fingers.

But Sephiroth's explanation didn't take long to arrive.  
"It was Hojo" his voice was undecipherable - surely Tifa had never heard him talking that strange way "Hojo healed the wound for me." for a moment, it looked like he wasn't going to continue - but when his eyes met Tifa's expectant ones, he sighed "After the mission, I didn't hear a single word from him, nor did he come to visit me in any of the hospital they had brought me to for first aid. It's not difficult to understand why" he commented with a knowing smile "This morning, just a few hours before the first official interview, I had this lenitive surgery planned. I was in the operating theatre already, but still conscious, when he walked in, wearing his white coat, followed only by his assistant, Lucretia. He grabbed my hand, examined the wound, muttered something like 'bunch of incompetent fools', and asked everyone to leave the room except Lucretia." he was silent for an instant - he closed his eyes, as if he was feeling back there "The surgery has lasted about half an hour - and in the whole process, you know what? He has never looked me into my eyes - never said one word. He moved around me the same way one would move around a sleeping dragon, afraid of waking it" Sephiroth chucked, and examined his clutching fingers again "Yeah - Hojo was afraid of me. But at least, he gave me my hand back. I guess he _is _a genius, after all"

"He's your father" the sentence escaped Tifa's lips.

Sephiroth smiled, tilted his head just a little, but didn't reply. Instead, he took a step closer to the edge of the cliff, and looked down.  
"Makes one fuzzy, eh?"

Tifa, who had been looking at it for so long that she had almost get acquainted, moved closer to the edge to.  
"Honestly, I like it." then she turned to Sephiroth - the smile on her lips in that moment was sly and provocative, and one of her long black bangs flashed in front of her scarlet eyes because of the wind "It makes me want to escape"

A blunt confession.  
But there was no shame in her voice, no rage in his eyes.

Of course, Sephiroth accepted the challenge.  
"So do it. You can escape, if you dive - you'll be _free_" he peered down the cliff, and pushed with the tip of his foot a small stone off the edge - it disappeared from their view soon after, and they couldn't even see it reach the wavy sea's surface. "It's not deadly. _I _have done it a few times, actually"

Tifa sneered.  
"The fact that _you _have done it doesn't make it less deadly, you know."

"Very funny, Lockhart." he arched his eyebrow. "But once again, cliff diving is a notorious extreme sport. I'm not the only one on Gea who's capable of it." he added with a kind of modesty that seemed out of place coming from his lips.

But Tifa was still lost looking down the cliff.  
"Say, you were serious? You have really jumped down here?" she stepped back, and back again, leaving at least two meters between her and the edge of the cliff. "I mean, down here _exactly_."

"I have." he confirmed "Last time, it was last summer. I usually choose this point, because it's the highest cliff you can find here around the palace. Why do you as-"

Out of the blue.

He felt the rush of air - air which smelled like _her _reaching his nostrils, grazing his right cheek.  
When he realised what had happened, he was alone. He startled briefly in his place, looking around half-puzzled, without realising that a frozen smile had appeared on his lips.

Tifa Lockhart had jumped down the cliff.

.

The water was brutally cold, she had to admit.  
She hadn't even left to herself the time to be scared of the jump, because her decision had been taken in less than one second - yeah, of course she had thought her heart was going to stop while falling down for those countless meters; but now she realised the true troubles were just to begin.  
Adrenaline was still pumping up to her head, and she felt shaky and lost into something she couldn't control. Now that she was among them, she discovered that the waves she reckoned so small and innocuous from the great height of the cliff, with their cute white foam on their top, were actually more crushing and wild than she had expected - she had no problems in floating, but she kept feeling dragged by the sea current here and there, without really having the power to decide her direction. When a wave which was bigger than the other ones occasionally came, her head disappeared for a moment behind the surface - since she had no time to close her eyes, it was like being yanked down into something beautifully blue and quieter - but also icy and unwelcoming. She tried to look up to spot Sephiroth on the top of the cliff - but she realised she had difficulties even in identifying where the cliff was.

It was in one of the moments the waves were submerging her - underneath the surface, standing out the usual low gurgling, a louder noise of myriads of little bubbles bursting, a white shadow somewhere near yet not near enough.  
When she emerged, she realised she was laughing loud, despite all the mess and the asperity of the situation -she could hear her own hysterical laugh overwhelming the splashing and the buzz in her head.

Tifa saw Sephiroth.  
She saw him struggling against the waves just like her, she heard his laughter following hers.

They both tried to swim towards each other, but the sea kept pulling them apart for various instants - still, their gazes were locked securely in every moment that it was allowed, and they were laughing, laughing gazes. Finally, a favourable wave, and Tifa found herself smashed against Sephiroth. Her hands gripped automatically on the wet fabric of his uniform, while his sane hand on her cheek was a hot island in that surrounding coldness, and it had the power of reminding her she actually _was _freezing.

"You're the most insane woman I've ever met, Lockhart - you're pure madness" Sephiroth almost choked for the waves and his own laughter.

And Tifa closed her eyes, all the salty drops on her face sparkling in the sun, all her raven locks plastered casually on her cheeks - she was laughing so limpidly that her teeth, white like the spume of the sea, were in sight. In that situation, any kind of hierarchy seemed so far that she think she had full right to touch his jaw and kiss him on the cheek for a considerably long time, breathing deeply his scent, her nose on his cheekbone. She couldn't breath - she had a hole in her chest - that was why, even if they ended up submerged by a wave, she just didn't care. It made no difference to her.  
Up the surface again, Tifa felt the sunshine hitting the bare skin of her shoulder - her soaked vest was sliding down her arm, while it was glued on her chest. But she could only look at Sephiroth showing her the perfect side of his face, since he had turned to kiss her hand. She didn't let a second pass before she kissed his cheek another time.

And they were stupidly under the surface again, as if they had forgotten how to swim.  
The next time they re-emerged, a wave splashed against the back of Tifa's head, and messed up her hair even more. As for Sephiroth, the bright smile wasn't still leaving his lips - and that was the most astonishing thing she had ever seen.

"Hell - I can't swim with this" he snorted, breaking the contact with Tifa and trying to get rid of his uniform. But a grimace of pain appeared on his face - moving his hurt arm was still impossible, after all.

"_Don__'__t_!" Tifa shrieked, and the second after she had circled his neck with her thin arms, hiding her worried, worried face in his neck, kissing it. When she broke away, it was just to let him look in her eyes, which seemed huge right in that moment "Please, don't hurt yourself anymore, Seph"

She missed the instant that followed the one in which Sephiroth's smile had disappeared - everything she knew after, was that they were kissing; without remembering who had begun, but understanding perfectly that Sephiroth's tongue drew her so out of herself that she forgot she had to swim. She could have drown forever, barely noticing the glacial water covering her.

Actually, it was Sephiroth the one who, shoving down with his legs, brought the two of them back on the surface.  
"Mad woman you _are_." he joked, pulling her away "You should focus more on the fact that here the sea's at least twenty meters deep"

But like a child who cares only about her new game, ignoring completely everything else, Tifa kissed him again, letting the water surround them. This time, underwater she broke the kiss, and opened her eyes - there was the darker shade of Sephiroth uniform, and the row of golden buttons glittering in its middle; she undid them with rapid movements, and when Sephiroth dragged her and himself back up, she helped the uniform slide off his arms, trying her best not to hurt him.  
Now the sun could burn one of his pale upper arms, too, while Tifa kissed his shoulder, licking the salt away in the brief moment in which the waves didn't inundate it.

His uniform was sinking down, and downer, the glow of the golden medal destined to fade away in the sea's depths.  
But when Sephiroth reclaimed her mouth back, they sank again.

Tifa let her hands sneak everywhere on his bare chest, which was getting cold like everything else there around. She was unable to swim - Sephiroth's hand insinuated under her vest, grazing her bare skin, upper, upper - and she lost it. When he pulled her back up the surface, he had his fingers on her breast, and a loud moan escaped her lips - a kind of moan she had never heard coming from herself all the time she had been with Cloud.

That was _not _love.  
Yet they both refused to believe it was just sex.

It was something _morbid_, wrong, insane. Maybe it was Stockholm Syndrome, maybe it was a possession disorder.  
Maybe if she hadn't been slave, maybe if he hadn't been his master - _maybe_ it could have worked. Maybe in a far, far future - maybe in another dimension.

Still, sure thing was, this time there was no going back.

--

Professor Gast walked up the stairs, holding the platter with Aeris' dinner - but halfway already, a bad sensation came over him. His heart skip one beat at the emptiness he felt growing stronger every stair he left behind - the echo of his own steps on the old wood had never sounded so void. When he reached her door, he laid the platter on the floor, slowly. The suspicion was fading away, making place for sureness.  
Gast tried to open the usual locked door, without brutal force as always.

But this time, the door opened.  
The noise which accompanied it, due to the fact that the door hadn't moved for days, was a sinister creaking.

There was no surprise in Gast's eyes at the sight of the empty room - paradoxically, what shocked him more was the freezing cold in which the room had fallen, since the window was open.  
There was _nothing _left - nothing for him, nothing for Ifalna.  
His eyes scanned the room again, more attentively, but he knew it had no purpose - if Aeris had wanted to leave a note, she would have left it _in sight_.

'_Nothing - there is nothing in her here except _him' The thought brought something else to his mind - something that left him suspended between rage, proud for his daughter, and resignation. _'This is the first time - the first time Aeris _disobeys_.'  
_The first time the gracious swan leaves her nest.  
The first time the gracious swan dared to fly free.

There were liquefied snowflakes glittering on the wooden floor, most of them gathering in small pools now - and there was something else, glittering pink on her bedcover - Aeris' mobile phone.

Gast rushed, feeling a new gush of hope surging in his heart - maybe after all she _had _left a message - maybe she-  
But when he pushed a casual button, he understood - the phone lightened up, showing him the last screen Aeris herself must have seen.  
There was just a text message opened - the answer phone report.

Gast knew that number - and the number of time it was listed on the screen in front of him was something hard, hard to believe - it was something utterly shocking.

Yet, it was true.

**End of chapter 10**

* * *

**Author'sNotes**: Here we go. I have no words to apologise for the everlong wait - I guess I've lost all my fans and no one will read this, because it's too late. But I want to publish this anyway, I just have to. I suppose I could tell you life has changed me and overwhelmed me in a bad, bad way, but once again, it's no excuse. Thank you, thank you so much to all the ones who're reading, to all the ones who were reading in the past, to everyone that has made me believe my story was worth something. Thank you Stacey - you have been so important in this, and not just because of beta-reading - you made me believe in 'Subservience' itself.  
And now, for all the ones who're still there, shall you proceed with the epilogue, and let me know if you've reached the very end ;).  
Take care,

Swamp-Eyes


	11. Epilogue

**Subservience**

* * *

**Epilogue**

* * *

_These things, they go away  
__Replaced by everyday._

_(U2)_

* * *

**.-°-..-°-.****Five years later****.-°-..-°-.**

A relaxed quietness filled the house.  
The window was open, letting a gentle breeze come in, making the cream coloured curtain flow up the wooden table. There was an ancient lamp on it, scattered colourful pastels, an incomplete draw, keys, undefined other papers, a few cheap pen-holders, an opened envelope with a bill it, a vase with red flowers, a motocross magazine. At the side of the table, a pitch black-screened TV, with a simple brown sofa in front of it. In the middle of the room, an elegant black grand piano; on the lucid painted surface, a small framed photo - a black haired woman, a black haired man, the latter carrying a beautiful blonde child - all the three of them laughing like idiots.

Hanged on the main wall of the room, right ahead the piano's stool, something in complete contrast with all the other peaceful and innocuous object in the house.  
A long, _long_, slightly curved disturbing sword.

Suddenly, a noise of hurried stomps down the stair broke the peace of the room - at the same time, she left the kitchen, a paper bag in her hand.  
"You're late again! You will never learn, will you?" she apostrophised the cheerful blond boy who was running down the stairs.

He, on the other hand, just threw his arms around her neck with a 'mmmh', and smiled widely soon after, showing her his teethes.  
"'m not late. Dad's usually far more late that I'm now, sooo.."

"Yeah, right" she tried to hide her smile while forcing the paper bag in his rucksack. Then, she started shoving him towards the door. "And now go. The teachers don't give a damn about the fact that your father's a worse latecomer than you"

But the boy's gaze was drawn to the sword - his smile disappeared, replaced by pure fascination.  
"Mom" he begun with rapt and curious voice "Is it true? Is it true that this is General Sephiroth's old sword, and that you've been his secret lover? You still _are_..?"

Her expression, while she rolled her eyes and smiled, gave nothing away.  
"Say - you really have to ask this _every _morning?"

And, as every morning, she didn't answer

**The End**


End file.
